The constitution of the United Kingdom has long been a source for debate due to the fact that unlike many other nations the United Kingdom keeps no single constitutional document and instead has an uncodified constitution comprising mainly of Acts of Parliament, court judgments and conventions. The need for a codified constitution never arose in the United Kingdom as the country has been stable for too long, its democracy has developed over a long period of time rather than through a revolution. Countries such as France and Germany were forced to draft their constitution as a response to revolt or war and younger countries such as the United States of America and Australia needed to codify their citizens rights and their political systems in
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Dicey a British jurist and highly influential constitutional theorist. A.V. Dicey in his book Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885) brought out what can be argued as the two main principles of the British constitution, parliamentary sovereignty and rule of law. This principle of parliamentary sovereignty or supremacy makes parliament the supreme law making entity or legal authority in the United Kingdom. The laws made by parliament can not be overruled by the courts and all future parliaments have the power to change any laws made in the past and since majority of laws passed in the UK are statute law this gives parliament extreme power. The legal power of the Parliament on paper makes it seem supreme but history has shown that even the parliament can be challenged, take for example the R (Factortame Ltd) v Secretary of State for Transport case in which a company of Spanish fisherman claimed that the United Kingdom had breached European law through the Merchants Shipping Act 1988 in which a section of the Act prevented companies using foreign ships registered as British vessels from fishing in UK waters. Initially the House of Lords rejected the injunction to suspend the act on the basis that the UK constitution did not permit to any court the right to suspend acts of parliament but after …show more content…
It saves the citizens of a nation from the possibility of being taken advantage of by high powered people such as government officials as stated “institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards” (Report of the Secretary-General on
Dicey a British jurist and highly influential constitutional theorist. A.V. Dicey in his book Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885) brought out what can be argued as the two main principles of the British constitution, parliamentary sovereignty and rule of law. This principle of parliamentary sovereignty or supremacy makes parliament the supreme law making entity or legal authority in the United Kingdom. The laws made by parliament can not be overruled by the courts and all future parliaments have the power to change any laws made in the past and since majority of laws passed in the UK are statute law this gives parliament extreme power. The legal power of the Parliament on paper makes it seem supreme but history has shown that even the parliament can be challenged, take for example the R (Factortame Ltd) v Secretary of State for Transport case in which a company of Spanish fisherman claimed that the United Kingdom had breached European law through the Merchants Shipping Act 1988 in which a section of the Act prevented companies using foreign ships registered as British vessels from fishing in UK waters. Initially the House of Lords rejected the injunction to suspend the act on the basis that the UK constitution did not permit to any court the right to suspend acts of parliament but after …show more content…
It saves the citizens of a nation from the possibility of being taken advantage of by high powered people such as government officials as stated “institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards” (Report of the Secretary-General on