The political constitutionalism of JAG Griffith

Despite exerting a considerable influence over contemporary constitutional thought, there is a very real sense in which the political constitutionalism of JAG Griffith has been neglected. This paper seeks a genuine engagement with Griffith's work and, in doing so, offers a reconstruction and partial defence of Griffith's political constitutionalism. The article characterises Griffith's political constitutionalism as ‘agonistic’– that is to say, issuing from a belief in the inescapably conflictual nature of human association. Central to this agonistic political constitutionalism is the relationship between conflict and politics – or what might be termed the political management of conflict. This paper argues that Griffith's account of conflict, although central to his constitutional thought, is underdeveloped, not least in its failure to elucidate precisely what is to be understood by ‘politics’. It is thus that the paper draws on the work of Michael Oakeshott to propose an understanding of politics as the pursuit of intimations that, it is argued, can help draw out an important blend of conflict, continuity and contingency in Griffith's political constitutionalism.