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The Constitution of the United Kingdom is the uncodified body of law and convention under which the United Kingdom is governed.
Because the UK has no single codified documentary constitution, it is often said that the country has an "unwritten constitution" or “uncodified”. However, most of the constitution does exist in the written form of statutes, court judgments and treaties.
Britain’s constitution - The key features (or principals):
Ø parliamentary supremacy and the rule of law
Parliament is the supreme law-making body: its Acts are the highest source of British law. The latter is the idea that all laws and government actions conform to certain fundamental and unchanging principles. One of these fundamental principles is of equal application of the law: everyone is equal before the law, including those in power.
Ø unitary state
The Uk is a unitary state rather than a federation or a confederation. The authority of local and devolved bodies like the Scottish Parliament is dependent on Acts of Parliament, and they can in principle be abolished at the will of the British Parliament in Westminster.
Ø Constitutional monarchy
another key principle, summed up in the maxim that "the Queen reigns, but she does not rule" and the often-quoted saying that the monarch acts only on the advice of his or her ministers.
Ø Government fused with parliament
The British constitution is parliamentary in character, and the executive ("Her Majesty's Government") is drawn from the legislature, Parliament. The doctrine of separation of powers is not as prominent in the British constitution as it is elsewhere.
Since the Government is "fused" with Parliament, and virtually every government has a majority, there is no formal restraint on the legislative power of the executive.
Constitution – 3 parts – common laws, statute laws, conventions
1. Statute laws
Acts of Parliament are laws (statutes) that have received the approval of Parliament - that is, the Sovereign, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. On rare occasions, the House of Commons uses the "Parliament Acts" (the Parliament Act 1911 and the Parliament Act 1949) to pass legislation without the approval of the House of Lords.
Acts of Parliament are among the most important sources of the constitution. According to the traditional view, Parliament has the ability to legislate however it wishes on any subject it wishes.
Selected key statutes:
Magna Carta (1215)
Bill of Rights 1689 - for England and Wales
Act of Settlement 1701
Acts of Union 1707 - union of the Kingdom of England & the Kingdom of Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain
Act of Union 1800 - union of Great Britain & Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949
Irish Free State (Agreement) Act 1922
Statute of Westminster 1931
Life Peerages Act 1958
Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973
Scotland Act 1998
Northern Ireland Act 1998
House of Lords Act 1999
Freedom of Information Act 2000
Constitutional Reform Act 2005
2. Common laws – общее право
правовая система, характеризующаяся тем, что источником права признается судебный прецедент.
The United Kingdom uses the common law legal system (except in Scotland where some civil law is incorporated, see Scots law) and court judgments form a source of the constitution: generally speaking, judgments of the higher courts form precedents or case law that binds lower courts and judges.
3. Conventions - обычаи
Конституционные обычаи имеют более существенное значение, чем судебные прецеденты (обычаи определяют, например, неприменение монархом права вето, порядок формирования правительства, существование и роль кабинета министров, статус министров).
Some important conventions
- The Sovereign shall grant the Royal Assent to all Bills passed by Parliament (the Royal Assent was last refused by Queen Anne in 1708, for the Scottish Militia Bill 1708, on the advice of her ministers).
- The monarch will not dissolve Parliament without the advice of the Prime Minister.
- The monarch will ask the leader of the dominant party in the House of Commons to form a government, and if there is no dominant party, the leader most likely to be able to form a coalition government.
- The monarch will ask a member of the House of Commons (rather than the House of Lords or someone outside Parliament) to form a government. It remains possible, however, for a caretaker Prime Minister to be drawn from the House of Lords.
- All ministers are to be drawn from the House of Commons or the House of Lords.
The bedrock of the British constitution has traditionally been the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy or parliamentary sovereignty, according to which the statutes passed by Parliament are the UK's supreme and final source of law. It follows that Parliament can change the constitution simply by passing new Acts of Parliament.
Since there is neither entrenched constitutional law nor a formal separation of powers, Parliament has the ability to change almost any aspect of the constitution at will. The constitution is therefore often spoken of by political scientists as being "organic;" that is, it has "evolved" over time since its medieval origins.
In theory, its flexibility makes it responsive to political and social change especially since many political principles are simply conventions.
For instance, until recently, there was no modern statute or document that attempted to codify the rights of citizens (e.g. freedom of speech) in the UK, common law precedents being the main source of "rights", referred to as 'civil rights'. Now, through the adoption of European Union law, and the European Convention on Human Rights, citizens are deemed to have certain negative rights that were previously unspecified in the legal system.
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