Title: Should Britain Have a Written Constitution?
Abstract: The question ‐ ought Britain to have a written, more properly, a codified constitution ‐ is perhaps wrongly put. The real question ought to be ‐ why should Britain not have such a constitution… She is, after all, one of just three democracies without one. There are two reasons why Britain has lacked a constitution. The first is that, historically, Britain never had a constitutional moment; the second is the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. Today, however, Britain finds herself engaged in the process of gradually converting an uncodified constitution into a codified one. There is undoubtedly a case in principle for enacting a constitution, but perhaps it ought to wait until the process is completed. There is, moreover, a tension between two types of codified constitution ‐ a lawyer's constitution which would be long and highly detailed, and a people's constitution which would be short, but, inevitably, broadly‐worded, and therefore open to interpretation by the courts.
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-10-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 7
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