It is through laws that policies of government are laid down for implementation. It does however have many constitutional roles to fulfil such as the power of the purse, oversight, foreign policy and legislation. It can be argues that Congress does fulfil its constitutional roles as it may deliver effective over sighting, legislation, money bills, representation and foreign policy that may provide good checks and balances. However, most would argue that Congress may not carry its roles effectively thus leading to poor scrutiny (sometimes over scrutinising) which leads to ineffective fulfilment of constitutional roles. The principle organ of the US state is to legislate, represent and scrutinise the other, safely separated, branches of the government.
What defines a Constitution? Constitutions should set down rules which provide a legal basis for determining how a Country should be governed. They ought not only to define the Institutions of the State in question but also should place restrictions on them and act as a restraint on Governmental power in order to protect the rights of the State’s citizens. S. E. Finer, V. Bogdanor and B. Rudden describe Constitutions as: ‘codes of norms which aspire to regulate the allocation of powers, functions, and duties among the various agencies and officers of government, and to define the relationship between these and the public.’ The aim of this essay is to understand whether or not the ‘codes of norms’ in the UK make up a clear Constitution. Generally, most countries have a Codified Constitution where the rules of government are written down in one key document, although the extent of how much of the Constitution is actually included in this document varies.
In order to assess how constitutional conventions are recognised and enforced within the UK system of government, firstly, will require a look at the different definitions of what amounts to a constitutional convention, and to discuss their function or purpose, within the U.K's constitution. Furthermore, it will be necessary to identify and consider the different examples of constitutional conventions and also examine their characteristics. As way of a starting point, conventions according to AV Dicey are defined as: "conventions, understandings, habits or practices which, though they may regulate the conduct of the several members of the sovereign power…are not really laws at all since they are not enforced by the courts. This portion of constitutional law may, for the sake of distinction, be termed the 'conventions of the constitution', or constitutional morality…" This definition concentrates on what conventions are supposed to achieve. However, this view is not entirely accurate and it is important that conventions are distinguished from habits and practices.
Constitutional construction is one mechanism by which constitutional meaning is elaborated. It works alongside constitutional interpretation to elaborate the existing constitutional order. The process of constitutional construction is concerned with fleshing out constitutional principles, practices and rules that are not visible on the face of the constitutional text and that are not readily implicit in the terms of the constitution. We can imagine a continuum of actions that political actors can take under a Constitution, ranging from policymaking to revolution. At one end of the continuum, political actors can take constitutional forms as a given and make policy decisions under it, filling government offices and exercising government power in (constitutionally) noncontroversial ways.
Parliament in Britain is generally regarded as making laws that apply to the entire population but there is no universal agreement that it should have unlimited power to make laws of whatever kind. In many constitutions, legal limits on parliament to make laws are set out in their written constitutions but as Britain does not have such a written constitution, does it mean that there are no legal limits on parliament? The traditional doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty was first defined by Dicey in the 19th century in his book “The Law of the Constitution”. According to Dicey’s theory, parliamentary sovereignty means, “the right to make or unmake any law whatever; and further, that no person or body is recognized by the law of England as having a ride to override or set asides the legislation of parliament.” This idea of parliament being sovereign was formed at time where England was not a democratic country and it could be argued that this theory is dated and can no longer be regarded as an immutable part of UK Constitutional law. If Dicey’s theory is placed in historical context, it was produced in a very different political environment to today.
The restriction of the arbitrary exercise of power by subordinating it to well-defined and established laws. Which principle conception? Formal or substantive. Formalist definitions of the rule of law do not make a judgment about the "justness" of law itself, but define specific procedural attributes that a legal framework must have in order to be in compliance with the rule of law. Substantive conceptions of the rule of law go beyond this and include certain substantive rights that are said to be based on, or derived from, the rule of law.
Arguments against adopting a codified constitution such as that it could lead to judicial tyranny are outweighed by arguments for it. However although a codified constitution may not beneficial a bill of rights would be as it would offer the protection of citizens rights, but could be written so that it wouldn’t become outdated. BODY – Codified and uncodified constitutions: A country’s constitution is often defined as being either codified or uncodified which can be said simply as written or unwritten (although no constitution is fully unwritten or written so this is not an all encompassing definition). Codified constitutions have three key features, chiefly that the document is authoritative, in that it is the highest law of the land and binds all political institutions. Another key characteristic is that it is entrenched as it is difficult to amend or abolish; there have been 27 amendments to the US constitution in over 200 years (mainly because it is extremely difficult to get both houses and the majority of states to agree on a bill).This type of constitution could therefore be described as being rigid.
Unlike other nations, UK does not have a written constitution (codified constitution), for example United State has a codified constitution which can always referred to their constitution, and therefore the sources like Magna Carta 1215, the Bill of Right 1688 and etc are essentially important in UK. Constitutional Convention is a set of rules and practices that define the relationship and power of those institutions of state. Due to the absence of codified constitution in UK this leads to the difficulties in identifying the constitutional sources. There are two main sources made up of the UK constitution: legal sources (statues, judicial decision and prerogative power) are the principal source and the non legal sources (convention) which primarily relates to the political rules of behaviour. To investigate the proposition there is no clear definition what amounts to a convention.
The current UK constitution has so many strengths that reform is unnecessary. Do you agree with this statement? In the UK we have an uncodified constitution, which means we have many different sources of the constitution rather than have a single authoritative document, which would be a codified constitution. The most significant source of the constitution is legislation which consists of both Acts of Parliament and lesser legislation like Orders in Council, and rules and regulation made by ministers under statutory authority. Common law, which has developed over many years becoming accepted due to court judgements.
So how can judge create law through the doctrine of precedent? The basic doctrine means every court in the UK is bound to follow any decision made by a superior court and in general, appellate courts are bound by their own decisions. Although this appears that the courts are not allowed to develop law, there are ways in which the judicial precedent can be avoided, in turn, allowing