The constitution is ‘unentrenched’, ‘unwritten’ and ‘uncodified’ unlike many other democracies. Should the UK have a written constitution?

o ‘Unentrenched’ means it is not legally difficult to change the rules of the constitution. (Whereas most countries with written constitutions entrench the rules of the constitution to prevent governments from changing to constitution to favour themselves/their party etc...)

o ‘Unwritten’ meaning that there isn’t one document where it is written down (unlike countries like the USA or France for example) The rules of the constitution are to be found in acts of parliament, in decisions of the courts, parliamentary debates etc...

o Most other countries try to sum up the important constitutional principles to form sort of a code. We however do not do this.

o The UK constitution has been constantly evolving and seems to work. There has never been a particular moment in which it became particularly desirable to produce a written constitution. (e.g. many countries do this after gaining independence from colonial rule. Others adopt ones after the end of the war. For example Germany adopted a new constitution after WW2 to ensure such a situation wouldn’t reoccur)

The system is a ‘Constitutional monarchy’. Note the legal importance of ‘the crown’. Should the UK be a republic (a state with an elected head of state)?

o In many countries, the heads of states are figureheads and quite separate from their heads of government

o It is important to realise that there is a separation between the monarch and ‘the crown’. (we use the phrase ‘the crown’ to describe many things. E.g. ministers of the crown, the crown prosecution service)

o ‘The crown’ is part of the government, the legislature, and the judicial system The UK parliament is said to be ‘sovereign’ (though now subject to EU law): Is it? If so, is that

democratic?o The basic idea here is that our courts will always give effects to acts of parliament

even if them deem them undesirableo Countries with written constitutions normally also have a bill of rights which

prevents parliament from passing laws incompatible with the constitution or some mechanism to strike down such laws

There is a Human Rights Act (1998) but it does not forbid parliament from making laws that interfere with human rights.

There is no separation of powers between the executive and the legislature (there has only been an official separation of the judiciary and the other organs with the formation of the Supreme Court on 1st October 2009) – does that matter? Are ‘checks and balances’ as good as ‘separation of powers’?

o All political executives have to be members of parliamento Instead of a strict separation, we have a system with many checks and balanceso The fear of lack of separation is that too much power in the hands of one group can

easily lead to abuse of the power Membership of the EU. This affects parliamentary sovereignty. Is there a ‘democratic deficit’

or a ‘bureaucratic surplus’ in EU membership?

There is no concept of culture of ‘citizenship’ in the sense of all being members of a political community in the UK.

Although the system is essentially a ‘political’ constitution (i.e. it places substantial reliance on conventions/constitutional culture rather than on law) a process of developing principles of both ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ law to regulate political behaviour and prevent abuse is taking place

o There is substantial reliance on conventions and the political executive For example, all political members of the government must be a member of

a house of parliament. This is not backed up by case law or legislation.o However, a process of developing both ‘hard’ law (legislature, case law) and ‘soft’

law (informal but nonetheless important rules though not enforceable in a court) to regulate political behaviour and prevent the abuse of power is always ongoing.

Hard law; Parliamentary Standards Act 2009. Rushed through in about 3 weeks after the MP expenses scandal. It set-up an independent body to run the new expenses system.

Soft Law; In the mid 90’s, there was a huge row over mp’s taking bribes to ask parliamentary questions. This led to a body called the Committee of Standards in Public Life being created. The first thing they did was to formulate the 7 principles of public life and those principles were then voluntarily adopted by HC, HL, the PM, and other local authorities. Another good example would be the civil service code which says that civil servants are not to be used for party political reasons. The reason soft law is effective is that they reflect public opinion.

A process of devolution and decentralisation of power to the nations and regions (Except England) and to independent agencies is taking place.