There are further features of a Liberal Democracy which need to be held by the UK for it too fall into the category; Elected representatives and the government should be held to account by the people, something which is true within the UK as members of parliament are held accountable to the people, if they don’t do what they promise the people will not re-elect them, they are also held to account by legislature. Civil liberties must also be protected, this is done in the UK under the Human rights act, as well as the Human rights covered by the European Convention in 1953. There is some debate here as
Outline Intrinsic and Extrinsic Aids Intrinsic and Extrinsic Aids are used to help judges interpret pieces of legislation and apply it to cases. They can also help define words within legislation so parliament’s intentions can be met. Intrinsic Aids, also known as internal aids are anything within the Act itself that can help judges with the interpretation of a particular section. The Long title is one of the most useful Intrinsic, it describes in general terms the purpose of the Act which makes complex words easier to understand so the true purpose of the Act can is met. The Explanatory memorandum is also very useful in finding parliaments true intention, an Explanatory memorandum accompanies all statutes since 1998 and sets out the purpose of the Act.
Assess the strenghts of the British constitution?- Marked essay with teacher feedback (25 Marks) A constitution is a set of rules relating to how a state is to be governed and organised. The primary function of a constitution is to provide legitimacy to those in power; however it also defines the limits of government power, protects freedom and distributes power within the political system. As such it could be said that due to the UK having an uncodified constitution there are many strengths and weaknesses, such as flexibility and adaptability, conservative pragmatism, executive power and domination and many more which will be further spoken about below. Some of these help to make the UK constitution a better one than other countries like the USA who have to stick to their constitution. A strength of Britain having an uncodified constitution is that its unentrenched nature is flexible and adaptable therefore easy to amend, 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.
“The Human Rights Act has revolutionised the way in which judges interpret statutes.” The Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) was incorporated into the United Kingdom (UK) law in order to enforce the rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to which the UK is a party. The Human Rights Act or the 1998 Act is said to have a major impact in judicial interpretative practices (Gearey et al). The rules of statutory interpretation were found at common law but the HRA is said to have given new rules on interpretation. Before turning to HRA, the judicial practice of statutory interpretation and the impact of the membership of the European Union need to be considered. The politics of the common law (Gearey et al.)
However, recently more and more people have become in favour of codifying the constitution. There are many arguments justifying the employment of a codified constitution in the UK, but the most important are to limit the executive and legislative powers, entrench the constitution to protect the people and to modernize the UK politically compared to all other modern democracies that have a codified constitution. In the 21st century, most democracies have a codified constitution with the exception of the UK, New Zealand, Israel and Saudi Arabia. This brings in to question how relevant and up to date the UK's political system is compared to the rest of the world. This essay plans to illustrate the pros and cons of a codified constitution and answers the original question; should Britain adopt a codified constitution?
(For the purpose of this essay I am taking the term lawyer to include solicitors, barristers and other legal professionals). It is argued that legal advice would dramatically suffer if this privilege was withdrawn as clients would be very reluctant to make full disclosure to their legal representatives, Lord Brougham demonstrated this in Greenough v Gaskell (1833)[4]. In both England and Wales Legal professional privilege is a single doctrine that separates into two branches: legal advice privilege and litigation privilege. Together they make for a very important principle within legal
b. Judicial activism arguably subverts past precedent and perverts legislative intent (under a separation of powers analysis) through legal artifices, where judges wield excessive interpretive latitude. c. Activist judges, exercise their judicial discretion contrary to their principals (i.e., as agents for legislators in applying the law) in favor of their principles (i.e., as agents for social policy considerations). d. judges can only legitimately discover clear answers in the text agreed to by the framers of the Constitution or the intent of those framers, e. judges become free to impose their political preferences in the guise of constitutional adjudication; f. they should only decide what is necessary to resolve a dispute between the two parties to a dispute g. Positively, judicial activism may be regarded as legal adaptation to social change by evolving principles drawn from constitutional text and precedent and applying core constitutional values
2014/10/20 Gyeongmin LEE Is Parliamentary sovereignty a reality, or a myth? Discuss. Parliamentary Sovereignty can both be seen as a reality or to some as a myth. Parliamentary Sovereignty is a principle of the UK constitution, it is the meaning of creating or removing any laws. Therefore Parliament sovereignty is the most important part of the UK constitution.
This occurs when the language in the statute is ambiguous and the judge has to use the rules of interpretation (i.e. literal, golden, mischief and purposive) to determine the intent of the parliament when it enacted the particular legislation. The human rights act 1998(HRA) as well, has increased the law-making ability of the judiciary. The interpretative provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998 have had a major impact on judicial interpretative practices. Under Section 3 of the HRA1998 the courts are required to interpret primary and subordinate legislation in a way which is compatible with the convention rights, 'so far as it is possible to do so'.
Sample multiple-choice questions for the English Legal System module for LLB open learning 1. Which of the statements below most accurately reflects the constitutional position between the legislature and the judiciary: a) Parliament encourages the judiciary to make law through the process of statutory interpretation because it does not have enough parliamentary time to enact laws itself. b) Parliament is the supreme lawmaking body and the role of the judiciary is to interpret and apply law made by Parliament. c) The judiciary considers itself a primary lawmaking body equal to Parliament. d) It is the role of the judiciary, when interpreting statutes, to fill in the gaps in the statutes.