The origins and sources of the British constitution

Britain—or more accurately the ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland’—is a different case entirely. The story of the UK’s constitutional
evolution is of, fi rst, the gradual unifi cation of disparate kingdoms
under one national sovereign (monarch), then, in due course, the struggle
for supremacy between the sovereign and the Christian Church, and ultimately
between the sovereign and Parliament.
As these various power struggles have been played out, at several points
in its history the UK has come close to adopting a formal framework specifying
the rights and responsibilities of its citizenry, but, up to now, has stopped
short of producing a defi nitive statement. Despite the fact that documents
of one kind or another form a huge part of the constitutional framework
governing the lives of its citizens, there exists no single statement of principles.
Therefore, in defi ance of campaigns by all manner of individuals
and pressure groups—from the Chartists of 1848, to the coalition of liberal
thinkers who put their names to Charter 88 a century and a half later—to all
intents and purposes, Britain still has an unwritten constitution.
As such, the British constitution has clear advantages: it is fl exible enough to
be amended, added to, or subtracted from according to the will of the elected
Parliament of the day, without any of the tortuous procedures required in
the USA and elsewhere whenever the slightest break with tradition is sought
in the interests of political progress. Conversely, it has the disadvantage of
provoking as much wrangling among lawyers, politicians, and historians as
it can ever claim to circumvent, by leaving substantial layers of ambiguity
around sometimes crucial issues relating to its subjects’ liberties. The recent
controversy about Gordon Brown’s decision to sign the EU’s 2007 Lisbon
Treaty—seen by some as a ‘European constitution’ in all but name—is only
one example of how easily the UK can adopt potentially signifi cant changes
to its constitutional fabric without any of the debate rendered necessary by
the rigid rule systems of other countries. Meanwhile, the perceived assault on
individuals’ civil liberties represented by the raft of ‘Big Brother’ anti-terror
legislation since the attacks on the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001, not to
mention the proposed introduction of identity cards and a national DNA database,
is viewed by human rights campaigners as an example of the dangers of
failing to enshrine core principles in a solid constitutional statement.
So what are the primary sources of the UK’s constitution? The constituent
components are probably best split into the following fi ve broad categories:
• statute—that is, individual laws, known as ‘Acts of Parliament’;
• common law—sometimes known as ‘judge-made’, or ‘case’ law;
• conventions—that is, customs, traditions, and long-standing
practices;
• treatises—historical works of legal and/or constitutional authority;
• treaties—that is, EU and other international agreements.

The separation of powers in the UK
The monarchy
The origins of the modern British monarchy
The role of the monarchy today
Taxation and the monarchy
Devolution—from union to government
in the nations
The unification of Great Britain
The path to devolution