Politics & International Relations
UK Constitution
The UK Constitution refers to the set of laws, conventions, and practices that govern the country. Unlike many other countries, the UK does not have a single written constitution but rather a combination of statutes, common law, and conventions. This flexible and evolving system allows for the adaptation of constitutional principles to changing circumstances.
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12 Key excerpts on "UK Constitution"
eBook - ePub- Mark Garnett, Peter Dorey, Philip Lynch(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
This benign view of the UK Constitution has never won universal acceptance. For many years, critics have claimed that unplanned evolution has left the country with outdated institutions, fit for a living museum rather than a nation which hopes to combine freedom and prosperity in a fast-changing modern world. The 1997 general election gave these critical voices new prominence, and the nature of the constitution has been a key feature of political debates ever since (although characteristic British attitudes persist, and many voters are probably unaware that recent political controversies are about much more than Britain’s relationship with the EU). This chapter includes many themes which are also mentioned elsewhere, but this only underlines the relevance of constitutional questions throughout the subject matter of UK politics.The uncodified constitution
Aristotle believed that a constitution was integral to the way of life of any political society. A more precise definition would characterise it as an authoritative set of laws, rules, and practices which specifies how a state is to be governed and the relationship between the state and the individual. It provides a framework for the political system and establishes the main institutions of government, outlining their powers and the relationship between them. It also determines where ‘sovereignty’ – traditionally defined as the ultimate decision-making power – resides within the state.A distinction is frequently drawn between written and unwritten constitutions. In a written constitution, the main rules and principles governing the state are enshrined in constitutional texts with special status. In an unwritten constitution, such rules are found in conventions or tradition. The British constitution is usually classed as unwritten, because the UK has no single constitutional document. This makes the country unusual among liberal democracies; only Israel, New Zealand, and (arguably) Canada are in the same position. By contrast, the written US constitution dates back to 1787 (though it has been subject to various partial revisions). Many of the constitutions of Western Europe were rewritten after World War II; for example, the present French constitution was introduced in 1958.
eBook - PDFBritish Government and the Constitution
Text and Materials
- Colin Turpin, Adam Tomkins(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
A written constitution might help, he argues (p 108), although it would not necessarily do so: In practice the true function of a written constitution is not so much to improve the clarity of the rules as to empower the highest court to strike down legislation according to its own interpretation of the words. The question is therefore whether the time has come to transfer more power to the judges, on the footing that the political constitution has broken down beyond repair. This is far from straightforward, since we cannot assume that the traditional juristic standards of the judiciary will be maintained once they have a political role. The ongoing tensions (or, if you prefer, the balance) between the parliamentary aspects of our constitution and its judicial aspects is one of the central themes of contemporary constitutional debate in Britain, and we shall touch on it throughout this book. 2 The constitution, the state and the nation Definitions of the constitution often focus on the concept of the state and its organs. For example, Hood Phillips and Jackson’s Constitutional and Administrative Law (8th edn 2001), p 5, defines a constitution as: the system of laws, customs and conventions which define the composition and powers of organs of the state, and regulate the relations of the various state organs to one another and to the private citizen. Regarded from the perspective of international law the UK is undoubtedly a state, but our constitutional system has been constructed largely without the use of the concept of the state. In Britain there is no legal entity called 11 The British constitutional order ‘the state’ in which powers are vested or to which allegiance or other duties are owed. The non-admission of the idea of the state helps to explain the tardy and partial development in Britain of a system of public law.
eBook - ePub- Mark Ryan, Steve Foster(Authors)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
In the United Kingdom the system of government and state institutions has not been specifically created by a single authoritative constitutional document or code; instead, it has developed and evolved over the years. By way of example, the Scottish Parliament, a major institution of the state, was created only in 1998. It is also of interest to point out that the legislation devolving powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland was preceded by a referendum in these countries.- ‘It therefore involves an authority outside and above the order it establishes.’ A constituent power (namely the people) ratifies the constitution, thereby conferring it – and the institutions established under it – with constitutional legitimacy (see section 2.4.2 ).
In the United Kingdom the people in a referendum have never formally ratified the British ‘constitution’. Notwithstanding this, as we have a parliamentary democracy, the people do at least every five years elect the House of Commons, which, in turn, gives democratic legitimacy to the laws that Parliament passes. Furthermore, these elections also confer legitimacy (albeit in an indirect sense) on the government to govern and determine major policy issues (see Chapter 11 ).- ‘It is a form of law superior to other laws.’ The laws of the constitution should be supreme and a higher form of law in relation to ordinary or non-constitutional laws.
parliamentary sovereigntythe legal principle that the Crown in Parliament can pass any law that it choosesIn the United Kingdom, historically, the laws of the constitution have not assumed a legal status higher than ‘ordinary’ laws. In this context, however, now see the comments of Laws LJ at section 4.4.5
eBook - ePub- Philip Norton(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
IITHE POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT
CHAPTER 4The Uncodified ConstitutionCHAPTER 5The Electoral System: Campaigns, Voting, and VotersCHAPTER 6Political Parties: More or Less Than a Two-Party System?CHAPTER 7Interest Groups: Insiders or Outsiders?CHAPTER 4
The Uncodified Constitution
A constitution may be defined as the body of laws, customs, and conventions that define the composition and powers of organs of the state and that regulate the relations of the various state organs to one another and to the private citizen.1The United States has a constitution; so does the United Kingdom. Expressed in purely formal terms (Table 4.1 ) there is very little similarity between them. Indeed, the differences are such that to the student weaned on a study of the U.S. Constitution, the British Constitution is nearly incomprehensible. Even to the student of British politics it is not well understood. Nonetheless, the differences should not be emphasized to the exclusion of certain common features. Both Constitutions are strong in that they reflect their respective political cultures.The U.S. Constitution is considered by Americans to embody the principles of a higher law, to constitute “in fact imperfect man’s most perfect rendering of what Blackstone saluted as ‘the eternal immutable laws of good and evil, to which the creator himself in all his dispensations conforms: and which he has enabled human reason to discover, so far as they are necessary for the conduct of human actions.’”2
eBook - ePubBeyond Magna Carta
A Constitution for the United Kingdom
- Andrew Blick(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
4 At present the constitution derives from various sources such as doctrines and conventions, the Royal Prerogative, statutory and non-statutory codes, Acts of Parliament, judicial decisions, international agreements, the ‘law and custom’ of Parliament, the work of past constitutional experts feeding back into the very entity they sought to define, and even the internal rules of political parties. Consequently, it is difficult even for the full-time specialist to grasp in totality all the key components. Inevitably, others struggle to comprehend the overall quality of the constitution. The 2008 Hansard Society research cited above included a question on how far respondents felt they understood different features of the constitution. Of all the subjects highlighted, ‘The constitutional arrangements governing Britain’ came eleventh out of 11 for respondents saying they knew it ‘very well or fairly well’, with 20 per cent. The most understood was the relationship between the casting of votes and the balance of party representation in the Commons, with 49 per cent. Other items coming above ‘constitutional arrangements’ included ‘How the Human Rights Act works in practice’ (34 per cent), the EU (28 per cent), the debate about the possibility of introducing a UK Bill of Rights (28 per cent) and ‘powers that government can currently exercise without Parliament’s approval’ (22 per cent).In a democracy this low level of knowledge about the rules and values making up the core of the system should be a source of concern. There is surely a connection between this problem and the lack of a written constitution, framing expressly the key arrangements in a single, public document of the highest official status. The desire to achieve clarity in this way has motivated the production of documents in UK and English history, as far back as the time of King Ethelbert of Kent nearly fifteen hundred years ago. Of course, in practice the extent to which written constitutions are depictions of reality varies. In some cases, as with the constitutions of the Soviet Union and their commitments to individual freedoms, they can be deliberate travesties of reality. Even when they have a substantial connection to the practical working of the polity and command general legitimacy within it, they can only aspire to capture in full all the essential features of the system. Some portion of the rules will always remain tacit; practice, custom and convention must play a part. Other deeper, invisible, underlying legal principles may (or may not) exist. The concept of an ‘unwritten constitution’ exists in discourse around the US system, with a different connotation from that applying to discussion involving UK arrangements. In the United States (US) it conveys the idea of a fundamental set of rules beyond or perhaps beneath the text, possibly residing in common law.5
eBook - PDFThe British Constitution: Continuity and Change
A Festschrift for Vernon Bogdanor
- Matt Qvortrup(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
5 The Politics-Free Dimension to the UK Constitution DAWN OLIVER 1 I. INTRODUCTION T HE UK Constitution is still predominantly ‘political’, as it was when Professor John Griffith delivered his Chorley lecture on ‘The Political Constitution’ in 1979. 2 Griffith’s interpretation of the position was that the UK Constitution and its rules were the outcomes of past and continuing conflicts between groups of individuals making their political claims and seeking to per-suade government to accept them. 3 These conflicts were commonly mediated by the political parties. This view of politics and its place was widespread at the time that Griffith wrote: Crick’s In Defence of Politics 4 argued: In spite of the compromises and half-measures which prompt the impatient idealist to regard politics as a dirty word – indeed because of them – the negotiating processes of politics remain the only tested alternative to government by coercion. In his lecture Griffith argued that it would be inappropriate for judges to have the power to interfere with the outcomes of these conflicts by striking down statutory provisions or by merits-based judicial review of decisions, because judges were 1 I am grateful to colleagues in the Faculty of Laws UCL for their contributions to discussion of my ideas at a seminar, and to Tom Poole, Adam Tomkins and Richard Rawlings for comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 2 J Griffith, ‘The Political Constitution’ (1979) 42 MLR 1.
eBook - PDFEnglish education
The law, the church and the government of the british empire
- W.H. Wells(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Oldenbourg(Publisher)
The British Constitution. The difficulty for the foreign student who wishes to understand the British constitution lies in the fact that there is no clear dividing line between constitutional laws and ordinary laws, between laws, that is, which are to be regarded as sacred, fundamental, and only alter-able under circumstances of the greatest solemnity, perhaps by a special proce«s; and laws that can be passed or changed or annulled in the ordinary course of business by the ordinary process. In the little book, 'Die Verfassung des Deutschen Reiches', there are a number of laws which stand on this special plane, so to speak; which possess an au-thority before which the ordinary legislative and exe-cutive powers bow. England has no such laws. To take an example. One might imagine that the Acts of Union with Ireland and Scotland form an in-destructible part of the constitution; but this is not the case. These Acts might be repealed any day by the same process by which a duty on imported tobacco might be repealed, with no more solemnity than the importance of the proposed change would naturally create, and by the ordinary means of legislation. So that there is in England, vested in the three ruling powers, the Crown, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, a sovereign power such as can hapdly be said to exist elsewhere. They are under no 105 obedience to a definitely framed constitution; they can alter their mutual relationships indefinitely; there is no-thing which can prevent them from doing so except external force. And the course of English history shows that they do so. The constitution undergoes from year to year changes that are best described as organic. The sovereign and the cabinet do not stand for what they stood a hundred, or fifty, years ago; and the same is true of the other branches of the legislative and exe-cutive. There have been organic changes unhindered by artificial restrictions; and there will be changes in the future.
eBook - PDFConstitutionalizing World Politics
The Logic of Democratic Power and the Unintended Consequences of International Treaty Making
- Karolina M. Milewicz(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
It is, according to Dicey (1889), a “historic” constitution, meaning that it is “original and spontaneous, the product of evolution rather than deliberate design” (Bogdanor 2004, 259). Unlike other constitutions that “have been built; that of England has been allowed to grow” (Low 1904, 5–6). What is more, Britain has developed a constitution that is not codified in a single document. Instead, it consists of a multiplicity of written and unwritten sources accumulating over the past 800 years. Although there is no authoritative list of sources that comprise the British constitution today (Finer, Bogdanor, and Rudden 1995, 41; King 2007, 10), it is relatively easy to pinpoint the written and formal parliamentary statutes (see Chapter 2). The unwritten and informal sources of custom and convention 13 are equally, if not more, vital to the development of the British constitution. Some writers even go as far as to say that the British constitutional order is entirely ruled by practice and not law (Brazier 2001, 3). Conventions contribute to constitutionalization “without express recognition in the statute-book, or in the proceedings of the legislature, or even in the common apprehension of the public” (Low 1904, 6). However, they can “become more formalised over time” (Barber 2009, 309). Thus, much importance is attached to conventions as the informal channel of British constitution making. An example of a constitutional rule that evolved over an extended period through convention rather than through statute is the doctrine of ministerial responsibility. 14 Ministerial responsibility is divided into collective and individual responsibilities.
eBook - PDFStretching the Constitution
The Brexit Shock in Historic Perspective
- Andrew Blick(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
It was inevitably partial. Parts of it already seem dated, and some might quibble with aspects of the content, but it provides a snapshot of the impression of one observer at the time: Brexit: the constitutional connotations Dr. Andrew Blick 24 November 2017 It is often said that the referendum on European Union membership of June 2016 and its aftermath have enormous constitutional implications. The following is an attempt to encapsulate in alphabetical list form what these ‘implications’ are. It has been compiled primarily through a survey of reports issued by parliamentary committees since the referendum. Issues identified in those publications connected to the referendum and prospective UK departure from the EU are included if they are judged to be constitutional in nature, or at least arguably to fit such a description. The definition of constitutional used here is that it engages: (a) values, rules or operational practices that are fundamental to the operation of governance, including in a legal, legislative and executive sense; or 22 The Constitutional Connotations (b) the relationship between different organs of governance; or (c) the relationship between those organs of governance and the public they serve. Some of the issues identified engage more than one of these aspects of the definition of ‘constitutional’ set out above. Each subject is listed with a brief explanation as appropriate. Balance of power between UK government and UK Parliament : does the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill as drafted imply an inappropriate transfer of legislative power away from the legislature and to ministers? Balance of power between UK and devolved governance : the allocation of repatriated powers between them. Balance of power between UK and local governance (especially in England) . Balance of power between devolved and local governance . British Overseas Territories : The UK has special responsibility for the governance of these Territories.
eBook - PDFTurpin and Tomkins' British Government and the Constitution
Text and Materials
- Alison L. Young(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
how the British constitution accommodates – sometimes relatively smoothly, but sometimes not – sites of constitutional authority both within the UK (see especially Chapter 4) and beyond its borders (see especially Chapter 5). In this, perhaps it may be said that we are siding with John Dunn’s judgment (in The Cunning of Unreason (2000), p. 66) that, in the UK at least, ‘Only massive selective inattention could stop anyone recognizing that states today remain (as they have been for some time) the principal institutional site of political experience.’ 1.4 Constitutional Reform and Constitutional Change In recent years the United Kingdom has been ‘going through a period of profound constitutional change’ (Oliver, Constitutional Reform in the United Kingdom (2003), p. v). The changes are regarded by some commentators to amount to no less than a ‘new British constitution’ (Bogdanor, The New British Constitution (2009), p. x). We would not go so far. Indeed, as we shall show later in this section, there is a very great deal of the ‘old’ constitution that remains. This said, however, there should be no doubting the significance of the reforms that have occurred in recent years and, indeed, that remain ongoing. In the pages that follow, we first set out what the main reforms have been, before offering some commentary on how they might best be understood. These reforms need to be put in the context of the pressure under which Brexit has placed the UK Constitution, causing some to regard this as a constitutional crisis. 1.4.1 An Outline 1.4.1.1 The Blair Governments (1997–2007) The ‘New Labour’ Government that took office in Britain in 1997 did so on a series of manifesto commitments to reform aspects of the constitution.
Instead of it being the rule that ‘whatever the Queen-in-Parliament enacts is law’, the rule of recognition will now be ‘whatever the Queen-in-Parliament enacts is law unless it infringes the Bill of Rights’. There will have been a quiet revolution in the basis of legal validity. We can see that as a possibility as soon as we become aware that, ultimately, legal validity is simply a matter of how citizens, officials, and agencies approach the traditional sources of law anyway. And that was the lesson we drew from the story of the Macmillan succession. 30 The constitution as a framework for politics In our discussion of structures and our discussion of constraint, the issue has been the balance of power in society. The aim of a constitution is to regulate that balance in a way that is regarded as fair and favourable to liberty, order, and responsibility as they are understood in the society. But there is also one other aspect of constitutionalism that is worthy of mention. The idea of positive law, as it has emerged in these chapters, is the idea that we can make and remake our society and our politics more or less as we please. Of course, there are limits to our success: we may try to make Britain fairer or more prosperous and fail. But in principle there is nothing in the way we organize things that we cannot change (though we may not achieve what we were trying to achieve in doing so). If there is a statute we can repeal or amend it. If there is an institution, we can restructure it. We can have two parties or several parties, proportional representation or the plurality system, quinquennial or triennial elections, nuclear weapons or conventional weapons only, a welfare state or no welfare state, a poll tax or local rates, and so on. That sense—that everything is up for grabs—can sometimes be unnerving. Partly this is the giddy sense of nausea that existentialists have pointed to: our fear of freedom
eBook - PDF- Veronika Fikfak, Hayley J Hooper(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
In this sense, the convention is merely a distraction . A. The Role of Conventions in the UK Constitutional Sphere I. The Flexibility of Constitutional Conventions Conventions are not legal rules. Instead, they have been described as‘understandings, habits or practices’ 22 operating alongside law in the British Constitution. 23 What makes these principles or traditions constitutional is that they both shape the constitution and govern the relationships between constitutional institutions. 24 According to Morton, constitutional conventions are instruments of dispute settlement; they emerge and develop to manage disagreements and tensions between different institutions of the constitution. 25 As he argues, ‘each institution builds up its own picture of the constitution as viewed from its own position within it’. 26 In this context, each institution puts itself centre-stage and ultimately, a number of conflicting conceptions of the constitution and its fundamental values arise. Conventions, as rules of dispute settlement, help institutions ‘cooperate’, by ‘encapsulating right behaviour’ 27 , and guide institutions as to the proper standard of behaviour. 28 They are born out of a need for institutions of the constitution to cohabit and work together. In principle, when considering the scope and extent of a constitutional conven-tion which operates between any two institutions, the perspectives of both institu-tions on the constitution are important. 29 As a binding rule of political behaviour, a constitutional convention can develop only when a practice emerges from the managing of a relationship between two audiences, in which one feels bound to behave in a specific manner and the other expects that behaviour as a matter of obligation rather than courtesy. In this sense, a convention ‘can come about, 73 The Convention as a Battlefield 30 A Blick, ‘The Cabinet Manual and the Codification of Conventions’ (2014) Parliamentary Affairs 191, 197.
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