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49 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 777 (1987-1988)
Bicentennial Bork, Tercentennial Spycatcher: Do the British Need a Bill of Rights

handle is hein.journals/upitt49 and id is 787 raw text is: ESSAYS BICENTENNIAL BORK, TERCENTENNIAL SPYCATCHER: DO THE BRITISH NEED A BILL OF RIGHTS?t Simon Lee* TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction .......................................... 777 II. The British Context ................................... 781 III. American Parallels .................................... 787 IV. USA to the Rescue? .................................. 789 V. Europe to the Rescue ................................. 804 VI. Spycatcher ............................................ 811 VII. The Way Forward .................................... 815 VIII. Conclusion ........................................... 820 I. INTRODUCTION Memorable comments on the American Constitution by British lawyers come at the rate of approximately one a century. The criti- cisms within Jeremy Bentham's outstandingly rude contribution to John Lind's An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress I in 1776 are well known. Bentham claimed that the doctrine of natu- t Copyright © 1988, Simon Lee. * Lecturer in Law, King's College, London University. BA, 1979, Oxford University; LL.M, 1980, Yale Law School. This Essay is an attempt to answer a question about the British Constitu- tion which has been asked persistently by my American friends since my time as a Harkness Fellow of the Commonwealth Fund at Yale Law School in 1979 and 1980, right up to the Anglo-American seminars held in Durham and London in the summer of 1987 under the auspices of the Institute of European Studies as a celebration of the bicentenary of the United States Constitution. I have bene- fited from all their observations on the bizarre British Constitution. I am also grateful to the Dean and Librarian of the University of Detroit Law School for supplying me with the American press coverage of the Bork hearings and the students participating in their London program for listening to earlier explanations. At the University of Pittsburgh, Professor Jules Lobel and the editorial staff of the Law Review, especially Sandra Renwand deserve, and receive, my deepest thanks for their patience as I have struggled to keep this Essay abreast of almost daily developments in the United Kingdom and United States Constitutions. 1. J. LIND, AN ANSWER TO THE DECLARATION OF THE AMERICAN CONGRESS (1776). Ben- tham's anonymous contribution is found in the Short Review of the Declaration which is included in

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