–Clear definition of constitution, list some of the strengths and weaknesses in your introduction A strength of Britain having an uncodified constitution is that its nature is flexible. Meaning that the government is not limited with their ability to change governing arrangements by having to go through a lengthy and complex and procedure, as the USA have to go through to just change something within their constitution, as such their constitution has only been changed 27 tines altogether since it was created in 1787. As a result the labour party were able to bring the European Convention on Human Right into British law in 1998 with the Human Rights Act. Cameron will also be able to repeal the Human Rights Act is wants to and replace it with a British Bill of Rights, due to Dicey’s rule of law Don’t you mean his view of parliamentary supremacy?) which is one of the sources of the constitution with one of the three rules being that no Parliament is able to bind a future Parliament.
It is happening because the powers of the prime minister are not well defined and mostly contained in unwritten conventions which are a mystery to most people. This means an individual prime minister like Thatcher or Blair can act in a presidential way without any constitutional controls. In the USA the written constitution states clearly what powers the president has and if he oversteps the mark the Supreme Court can step in. The British Supreme Court cannot do this because we do not have a codified constitution. This
Less extreme than revolution is creation, which adds new text to a pre-existing Constitution. Creation embraces a revisionary authority, but the revisions are partial rather than total. They amend and reform the Constitution, rather than throw it over. Interpretation and construction are both concerned with elaborating, developing and effectuating the pre-existing Constitution. Unlike the mere policymaker, the interpreter or constructor engages the Constitution directly and attempts to address and resolve contested claims about constitutional meaning.
However they do have the ability to make suggestions to possibly amend the law through highlighting flaws. The judiciary cannot make judgments past the jurisdiction of the law even in interests of natural justice. A strong example of this was the Belmarsh Case, where judges believed the system of holding foreigners against the will under the anti-terrorism act contradicted with human rights. This law was subsequently changed. This could pose some doubt as to the judges power, as although they can not officially change laws, they clearly have the power to suggest changes with ease, and some could argue that despite Lord Neuberger’s claims, they do indeed undermine parliamentary sovereignty through their suggestion of changes.
The UK has an unwritten constitution as there is no single authoritative document which establishes government regulations. There is a constitutional jigsaw of various sources, such as legislation, case law, Royal Prerogative and Constitutional conventions. These are the main sources of the UK constitution and so merit discussion. This can be contrasted to the USA which has a written constitution, setting out the fundamental laws. I argue that to some extent the UK has a flexible constitution, and Giussani’s statement is partly correct.
When the Labour government implemented these laws they protected traditional parliamentary sovereignty. Unlike Germany or the USA where judges can annul legislations that are found to be in breach of the human rights act. In the UK however judges can only issue a declaration of incompatibility which sends the legislation back to parliament so that they can make changes to suit the HRA. It is difficult to declare on this subject whether or not there have been enough reforms on the Human Rights Act as through one viewpoint it is important to sometimes evade Human Rights to catch potential terrorists on the other hand millions of people have had to sacrifice their right to private life as has been found with the major scandal of NSA spying on internet records. Some people may argue that if you have nothing to hide you should not fear however people still should be able to have
A core principle of the United Kingdom’s (UK) unwritten constitution is the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty - described by British constitutional scholar Albert Venn Dicey as the ‘keystone of the law of the constitution’ . Dicey defines parliamentary sovereignty as follows: ‘The principle of Parliamentary Sovereignty means neither more nor less than this, namely that Parliament thus defined has, under the English constitution, the right to make or unmake any law whatever; and, further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament’. Dicey’s account of parliamentary sovereignty consists of a positive and a negative limb. The positive aspect is that Parliament, as the supreme law-making body of the UK, has the ability to legislate on anything it wants. The negative aspect is that once an Act of Parliament has received Royal Assent, no person or body can question its validity, not even the courts.
The British Constitution Briefly explain the term flexible as used in the extract Flexible means that the constitution can be amended easily and quickly as unlike a rigid constitution such as the one in the US, there is no lengthy procedure for change that has to be followed. A flexible constitution it can be altered via the law-making process, by a simple majority in the legislature as no laws are regarded as fundamental. “There is no convincing case for a written/codified constitution in Britain” Discuss To a certain extent there is no convincing case for a codified constitution in Britain. The main reason against a codified constitution in Britain is because a codified constitution would totally undermine the sovereignty of Parliament, the idea that Parliament can legislate as it chooses and that there can be no superior authority to Parliament. Moreover, no such document could be entrenched whilst Parliament retains the power to alter it at will.
‘The advantages of a codified constitution now outweigh its disadvantages.’ Discuss. (40) The codification of a constitution is the process of setting out a constitution in an organised way in a single document meaning it has a single source. The UK constitution is that of an uncodified nature meaning it has various sources and not all these sources are written down. It is questionable whether a codified constitution is better or worse than an uncodified one and personally I deem an uncodified constitution as more effective than one in written form therefore disagree with the above statement. Firstly, a codified constitution would clarify the nature of the political system to citizens of the state.
A codified constitution is too inflexible and cannot adapt to the changing political circumstance, such as society changing. An uncodified constitution is much more flexible for when archaic laws need to be replaced with something more adept to modern society. This also means that codified constitutions may fossilise the political systems as that system may have originated many years go and not be practical in this time, whereas uncodified constitutions are able to evolve over time, and thus embody the climate of the day. This can be shown from the US constitution which has had only 26 amendments since 1787, this shows the difficulty of changing an entrenched written constitution. Countries with codified constitutions have a legislative process that can seem complicated, lengthy and also ineffective.