The Main Pillars of The Constitutional Conventions in United Kingdom

Although there have been debates around the world regarding the Nature of the UK constitution and its success and failure in the modern world, we all can see and understand that UK has a unique system of governance which is termed as uncodified constitution. Referring to the definition of JAG Griffith which I also supposedly find the most suitable states ‘the constitution is no more and no less than what happens. Everything that happens is constitutional. And if nothing happened that would be constitutional also’1 There are more definitions ranging from Kings to Ridley but they all turnout to be either a bit vague or too specific. There are basically three pillars in the UK that add up to be a constitution and provide a basic structure to a country.

The first pillar that binds and controls the allocation the governmental power is convention that are the non-legal rules which are practiced by the government. There are many countries which have conventions but in the UK it plays an important role because UK has a s-constitution. They are not enforceable in courts but are rarely broken. Conventions can be defined in broader terms as non-legal rules of conduct guiding the actions of, and relationships between, politicians and officials under the UK constitution. This makes it the rules of utmost importance which cannot be taken to court. But in the recent times it has been seen though indirectly that courts do give a consideration to conventions in the cases of national instance for instance, Attorney General v Jonathan Cape Ltd [1976] QB 752 (CA) is a remarkable example where a convention was taken into consideration while addressing a case, TRA Allen clearly mentioned that using a convention in a case has only been done because it justified its nature2. There has been long debates regarding the differentiation of law and conventions and there is nt much that can be deduced leaving the fact that laws (statute ) and conventions are very much similar and Jennings’s critique cited the council tax reform4. One of the basic questions that arises reading the importance of conventions in UK constitution is why are not they codified even when they shape the basic structure of government structure. We need to understand that codification of various conventions is not same as making them enforceable in courts. Codification only results in publishing the conventions which has now been a few times. The ministerial code 1992 ee which is published by the cabinet office lays down the conduct of ministers. Adjoining this civil service code is also a prominent example. Gmarshal and gc moodie has provided a balancing argument regarding the codifications of the conventions 22. There were various occasions where conventions were taken into consideration for converting them into common laws but courts have always rejected for the same but there have been some consventions which were turned into bills such as money bills and fixed parliament act. In a nutshell we can express that conventions have been moulded over the yeasr and codifying all of them would not come out into a positive way because as current status they can be easily changed as per to the circumstances but once they are codified and put into legislation they have to be amended following the proper procedure which might take up months or years. people question upon easily changing nature of conventions is dangerous as it may to go against public interest but they tend to forget that MP’s sitting inside the parliaments are their own elected representatives.

The second pillar is statue these are acts of the parliament these are lawful acts which are enacted by the Westminster parliament. These are most important part of the UK constitution as it build up to written part of the constitution. No legal rule can supersede any statue other a new statue 990. Statutes govern the relation between all the bodies of the nation namely public institutions, private institutions, individuals and the state. On average UK parliament passes 32 legislations every year on diversed topic out of which a few are term as special constitutional importance. Bills of Rights and The petition of rights 1628 are a few of prominent legislations passed over the times.

The third pillar is common law which develops on the judicial precedents. These are developed by judicial decisions of the court and used to decide further cases. Certain cases relating to private law are based on judicial precedent and they also lay down some constitution rules for instance, m v home office 434. It is also derived on the basis of the interpretative function i.e they can use parliamentary debate when understanding a ambiguous statute. However we should note that decision of the courts may be amended and overridden by later statutes. Judicials precedents are sometimes overturned by the course due to change in customs and time. There are many cases in private law where new precedents are set by the higher judicial bodies.