Uncodified Constitution Advantages

There has been much debate on whether codified or uncodified is a more beneficial form of constitution and whether or not the uncertainty created by the lack of a codified constitution outweighs the benefits of an uncodified one. The aim of this essay is to evaluate the UK’s use of an uncodified constitution and whether or not they should continue to do so. I will also refer to past proposals and summarise the advantages and disadvantages of the uncodified constitution from these past proposals.

To begin with, I shall define the key elements of the UK constitution. Firstly, a constitution is defined as a key set of rules upon which the state follows. The main concerns of the constitution are the relationships of the three institutions with …show more content…
It has been suggested that introducing a codified constitution is the only way to do this. The Liberal Democrats have argued that the existing constitutional arrangements are haphazard and the fact that they depend on trusting the government to follow the rules of constitutional conventions, respect democracy and to upkeep our fundamental rights and freedom has become unreliable. The idea that governments can be trusted to observe conventions, and that an uncodified constitution gives our system flexibility has been outlived.

Within the proposal, the Liberal Democrats suggested several advantages of introducing a codified constitution. They said that a codified constitution would introduce clarity and democratic legitimacy. It would also preserve the values and principles that our current system has. A written constitution will be entrenched so that Parliament will not have the flexibility to change the constitution through the use of a parliamentary majority. Entrenchment ensures that the government cannot seize power through the use of their position and cannot undermine the norms of the constitution or remove individual