Fundamental values and law: back to basics

“Few institutions reveal the temper of our times as clearly as judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation. […] Written constitutions, and the subordination by the courts of statutory law to those constitutions, represent innovations with deep philosophical roots. From the earliest times men have sought to create or discover a hierarchy of laws and to guarantee this hierarchy. Indeed, this search is one aspect of man´s never ending attempt to find something immutable in the continous change which is his destiny.

Laws change, but the Law must remain, and with it the fundamental values; a law which contravenes that Higher Law is not a law at all”.

Cappelletti, M., Judicial Review in the Contemporary World, Bobbs-Merril Company, New York, 1971, at p. vii.