Albert Venn Dicey

Albert Venn Dicey (born February 4, 1835, near Lutterworth, Leicestershire, England—died April 7, 1922, Oxford) was a British jurist whose Lectures Introductory to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885) is considered part of the British constitution, which is an amalgam of several written and unwritten authorities. For this treatise, which is noted for its application of legal positivism to the study of British constitutional law, he drew on his knowledge of constitutionalism in the United States as well as in Great Britain.

Dicey taught law at the University of Oxford (1882–1909), where he was Vinerian Professor of English law and a fellow of All Souls College, and served as principal of the Working Men’s College, London (1899–1912). Between 1886 and 1913 he wrote four books opposing Home Rule in Ireland. In 1905 he published his Lectures on the Relation Between Law and Public Opinion in England During the Nineteenth Century.