A-level politics students, are you ready? Let's talk about the constitution. What is a constitution?
It is a set of rules in which a state or an organisation operates. Almost every single state, of course, will have a constitution. Most, most countries in the world.
the world like the vast majority have a codified constitution but the uk decided no no no no no i'm gonna be different and so our constitution is not codified before we talk about codification let's just get over some very key principles in our constitution. First one being parliamentary sovereignty. Parliamentary sovereignty is something that you need to bear in mind the whole time you're doing A-level politics because it applies to so many areas apart from the constitution.
It applies to the cabinet, it applies to the government, it applies to parliament, it applies to the judiciary, like the list goes on and on. It is incredibly incredibly important. Sovereignty is the ultimate decision power within the state and within In the UK we have parliamentary sovereignty. Which means that the parliament is basically the most important thing.
It holds all the power It is the most powerful body in the entire country It passes the laws and these laws cannot be overridden by anyone else and every new parliament sovereign Which means past parliaments can't come forward and be like, hey, no, we're in charge They're not bound by anyone they are the most powerful it's the most powerful institution in the country that's important Remember that. that. No one is above it. Parliament is at the top. Next is the rule of law.
This was established in the Magna Carta. Everyone is subject to the law. No one is above the law.
That's pretty basic. We have a constitutional monarchy, which means we have a monarch and they are the head of state. Do not get fooled that the king has any power whatsoever, because remember, parliament is sovereign. The king has no power. He has no power at all.
He's just more of a formal institution. he has to pass the laws that he is given by parliament for royal assent. He's not allowed to have an opinion on politics at all. So he's there but he's not doing much. Finally we have a unitary state.
This means that all of the power is concentrated into one area. There's one body that is making the decisions for the rest of the country. If we didn't, if like power was kind of decentralized so spread out across different you know, constituencies or counties. counties, then we would be federal, like the US. So think of it as power all comes from Westminster.
There are some devolved powers, but the ultimate power, the ultimate body that decides the powers for the rest of the country is Westminster, okay? Those are important principles. These aren't necessarily things that you need to write an essay solely about, but they are things that are really, really important and will you know impact the rest of the politics that you do.
These are principles that you should really keep and bear in mind. I'm going to skip over for now the many acts that have developed the constitution just because they're just a bit procedural but if you're interested in them you can look up at the developments in your own time. Now what makes up our constitution? Because we have an uncodified constitution so it's made up of a lot of different things.
First of all statute law which is law that is passed by parliament this law is the highest law it's the law of all laws there's no law that is higher than this statute law and below it is common law this is law that is made by judgments in cases so a judge may decide in a ruling that this is a new principle law very much changes and adapts over time sets a precedent for future cases it's known as judge made law but it's not higher than statute law but this can help form the constitution conventions these are like traditions this is a custom or thing that we have done throughout the years that essentially just becomes part of our political makeup. There's no legality to it, it's more honoring a tradition. Treaties and also any significant texts or books that things are relevant like A.V.
Dicey's book. Now we've covered that, let's quickly talk about codification, whether it should happen or not, because this is a big debate in A-level politics. There are only four other countries in the world that don't have a codified constitution.
That really shows you how rare it is to have an uncodified constitution. Okay, well it's important to first of all establish what even is a codified constitution. A codified constitution is a constitution, so a set of laws that is made by a country and is put all in one place.
Single document which contains all of the rules and laws of the state and often it's entrenched. This means because these laws, this constitution is the most important legal document in the entire country, very difficult to change it. Because of course, as you can imagine, this is the most important document, as I say.
It has all the powers, it has all of the laws. If people could just easily change it, you could possibly get a dictator come in and like change things up. You could, you know, seriously.
put your subjects in danger. So this document obviously needs protection and that's why they are entrenched. Now as I say in the UK we do not have a codified constitution. Obviously we have many sources to our constitution, it's scattered apart, there's no set document and it's definitely not entrenched.
Changing the law in the UK is, well, quite easy. So let's then talk about the debate because this is often asked as a question in A-level politics. As I just mentioned, there is the problem of danger to citizens. As I say, to pass a law in the UK is actually not too difficult, especially if you're a government and you have a majority. It is very, very easy or simple, pretty much to change the UK Constitution.
You need to pass a law through that. the houses of commons and through the houses of lords that's it in the u.s i mean it's almost impossible to change the constitution it has been done but a handful of times which means they've very much been protected from tyranny no dictator could come in in the u.s and say i'm going to change the constitution today and just pass the law straight away no they would have to go through a very long process to do that that's why they've struggled for the longest time to change things like the amendment on gun ownership because it's just like so difficult it's so difficult to do. Having a codified constitution in the UK could mean that those rights and the citizens of the UK are protected. Rather it's a bit worrying that actually we don't really have anything like a bill of rights.
There's obviously the Human Rights Act. There's no document that really sets out in full and entrenched in full the rights of UK citizens which means they can often come under attack. look at the ways that the transgender issue is being dealt with right now. The rights of migrants, rights of other people in our countries are constantly coming under criticisms and things can change very easily. In the US for example you have a bill of rights, you have a rights that are really set out and again entrenched, you can't just change that easily.
You're protected from those that might want to infringe upon you. There's no higher body in the UK to kind of look over this, there's no oversight on parliament. Obviously there's things like select committees and judges but they don't have the ultimate power the parliament and the government does so if they want to pass a law that's potentially controversial or the people don't like it well it's tough and the government also have passed laws to actively benefit themselves for example constitutional reform you wonder why they're trying to get rid of all the hereditary peers well it's because the majority of the hereditary peers are conservative supporting So keeping them in power.
would be actively hurting the Labour government. I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing but you can see the UK government literally changing the Constitution, changing the laws to fit themselves whereas with a codified constitution you wouldn't be able to do that. Not all things are good about a codified constitution.
As I say because of that level of protection it's so difficult to change it and that is bad. This means that old and archaic laws like the gun ownership law. do not apply to a modern day civilization.
I always make this point, when the founding fathers wrote the constitution, when they wrote this, they did not have the kind of rifles or whatever they have in the US today. They didn't have them. They had these very slow, old weapons that would take ages to load and obviously they would do damage, but nothing compared to what we have today. We have today are machines that are readily available to people that could actively really harm people. It's very hard to get rid of them because of how codified the constitution is.
Entrenchment means that you need a super majority or there's another process that's very complicated. Change the constitution which means it's incredibly inflexible and hard to do. You need flexibility in a constitution. Think about how much society progresses over time.
In the UK because our laws are so flexible we were able to legalize gay marriage, we were able to legalize abortion, we were able to criminalize and get rid of the death penalty because it's very very easy to pass laws. and to change our constitution. Can't do that in the US. It's very difficult.
In the US, they have to have court judges to overlook the constitution and uphold it. In the UK, the power is in the hands of the people. We can see in the US, these judges are not impartial and they are given too much power to impact the whole of society.
Whereas in the UK, this is not the case. More coming in part two. I hope this was helpful.
Thank you so much for joining me and I'll see you very soon. Bye-bye.