A summary of lecture notes on UOL's UK Constitution. Very helpful to understand and grasp basic concepts and use as a starting point for a detailed exam preparation and revision.
Lecture
The UK Constitution
Definition
It is a set of rules and laws that provide the framework relating to the governance of a
state.
As per the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution (2001), “the set of
laws, rules and practices that create the basic institutions of the state, and its component
and related parts, and stipulate the powers of those institutions and the relationship between
different institutions and between those institutions and the individual”.
Professor Albert Dicey further signifies it as a “set of rules which directly or indirectly affect
the distribution and exercise of sovereign power in the state”.
Finally, Samuel Finer described it as “codes of rules which aspire to regulate the allocation
of functions, powers and duties among the various agencies and offices of government, and
define the relationships between them and the public”.
As per Wade & Phillips, the word ‘constitution’ signifies as a document “having a special
legal sanctity which sets out the framework and the principal functions of the organs of State
and declares the principles governing the operations of those organs”.
Classification
Codified/Uncodified
The entire world (194 UN members and North Korea) apart from UK, NZ and Israel rely on a
codified constitution. This is one in which key provisions our outlined and formulated in a
single document or set of documents.
An uncodified constitution does not rely on a single document but on fundamental rules that
often take the form of customs, precedents and a variety of statutes and legal instruments.
Therefore, although UK’s constitution has evolved over several centuries, it cannot be found
in a single or any set of documents. You may consider that since the purpose of a
constitution is to determine operation of govt institutions, the UK has such institutions that
are operating in that manner to advance constitutional norms in an uncodified way.
Rigid/Flexible
A rigid or entrenched constitution is one where constitutional provisions can only be
amended through a special procedure. As such, constitutional law has a higher status than
all other forms of law and are typically contained in one written document.
For example, in US to make a constitutional amendment, a proposal must pass by both
houses in Congress with a two-thirds majority. Then must be approved by three-quarters
of the 50 individual states. It should be stressed that the US Constitution is a very heavily
entrenched one – other states have different, less rigid arrangements but still protect
constitutional fundamentals to a degree through entrenchment.
A flexible constitution is one where constitutional provisions can be amended where no such
special procedure is required.
For example, in UK the parliament is the supreme law-making body and it can pass, amend,
or repeal any law with a simple majority. The Human Rights Act 1998, for instance, could
be expressly amended or even repealed entirely in the same way as any other Act of
Parliament. No special mechanisms are necessary to change important constitutional laws in
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