the british constitution dec 2007

[...]... form—in the late 1860s.1 Bagehot was irked by the disjunction, as he saw it, between the British constitution as it was generally believed to be and the British constitution as it actually existed (He did not bother to explain why he called it the English constitution rather than the British. ) His thesis was simple The English, he said, were still 16 The Canonical Sextet persuaded of the idea that their... and published in the UK, and there are people in the UK who call themselves constitutional lawyers But, in the absence in Britain of a codified Constitution, what constitutes the textbooks’ and the lawyers’ subject matter? The short answer is that, in the UK setting, constitutional law resembles the constitution itself That is, it encompasses those aspects of the constitution that take the form of statute... well as the discourse of political theorists 12 What Is a Constitution ? The politicians’ and the theorists’ concepts and language have not always been identical, but they have nevertheless had much the same ideas in mind America’s Founding Fathers set out in 1787 to ordain a constitutional form of government Germany’s founding fathers did the same in 1948 when they drafted the post-war German Constitution, ... Loix to the English (i.e British) constitution and that went on to prompt the British to take such pride in their ‘matchless constitution during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars and then for the better part of two centuries after that The ideas of constitutional government and constitutionalism have formed a central part of Western political discourse throughout the modern era the discourse... have constitutions in this sense, and whether their constitutions are admirable or otherwise is, in this context, neither here nor there The academic lawyer J.A.G Griffith was using the notion of constitution in this strictly non-evaluative manner when he asserted flatly that, in the British case, the constitution is what happens’.2 Even given this definition, there may, of course, be some debate about... undoubtedly one of the country’s most important rules, as is the rule that the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons normally becomes prime minister At the other end of the scale of importance are, for instance, the rule requiring the Speaker of the House of Commons to wear a black gown when presiding over the House and the rule (or is it merely a custom?) requiring someone called the Gentleman... lines They thought a What Is a Constitution ? 7 ‘common understanding’ rather than a formal rule would suffice And they were right Led by Chief Justice John Marshall, the US Supreme Court in Marbury v Madison in 1803 struck down a clause of the Judiciary Act 1789 on the grounds of its unconstitutionality The court did not thereby amend the US Constitution, but it certainly amended the US small-c constitution. .. embodies these tenets of constitutionalism—not least the independence of the judiciary—in one form or another The third pillar of constitutionalism concerns the relations between the state, however constituted, and the body of citizens Obviously the rule of law is meant to act as the principal restraint on the state in its relations with citizens; in a constitutional state, the government is supposed... expounded their views of the nature of the British constitution as they saw it in their own time 2 The Canonical Sextet Because the Constitution of the United States is codified and has been regarded for more than two centuries almost as a sacred text, and also because constant litigation dealing with matters of constitutional interpretation takes place before the American Supreme Court, the United... limited number of writers on the constitution to define for the British, over a long period of years, what their uncodified constitution was and what it meant Those few writers’ major works constitute a good jumping-off point for consideration of the constitution today The list of the classical writers on the constitution is almost self-selecting There having been so few, the few stand out Almost no one . scope. The phrase the traditional British constitution is used frequently in these pages. The traditional constitution that I have in mind is the one that existed during the roughly three decades. do for the British constitution at the beginning of the twenty-first century what Walter Bagehot did for what he insisted on calling the English constitution during the latter part of the nineteenth. dominated the House, while at the same time having to heed the views of their parliamentary supporters. The courts of law still retained their independence of the government of the day, while at the