Hello everybody and welcome to the first lesson in a subject on public law. What we're going to do in this lesson is talk about the nature of public law as the subject of constitutional and administrative law itself. We'll look at the question of what it means to call something a constitution, what actually is a constitution, and then we will start to talk about the scope of this series of lessons in the future.
So like I said we're going to talk about some of the basic features of constitutions, the idea of the UK constitution as being a relatively unique entity within general constitutional theory and constitutional law, and then outline the basic structure of the constitution in this series of list lessons. So let's begin. What is a constitution?
That is the first question which may be asked. And ultimately the question, simply put, is that a constitution is, in brackets, often, some document which outlines the procedural and structural components of some kind of entity. Now that sounds quite vague, that sounds quite broad, that sounds not particularly very detailed or precise, and the reason why that is the case is because a constitution does not necessarily have to refer to the constitution which governs a state, for example, like the UK constitution.
You can have a constitution within corporations. In company law, there is this idea of a company constitution. And the company constitution is the document which outlines the procedural and structural elements of a corporation, of a company.
So similarly, in this similar vein, states will have a constitution. A constitution is often a written document, and this written document outlines the basic procedural elements and structural components of the state, as well as the relationship that is had between the state and the people who live in said state. Now, the thing that is interesting about the UK's constitution is if we go back to the previous slide, I was talking here about the idea of a written document which outlines the procedural elements of a state.
If we look at the US, for example, they have a single written document, and it is the US Constitution. It is consistent. It's not particularly long. It consists of a number of different articles, as well as 27 amendments to it. Now, That same kind of structure, that same kind of document that we have in the US is not the same as what we have in the United Kingdom.
Because in the United Kingdom, we do not have a single constitution which is written down in one place. And so as a result of that, we bring us to our first distinction between different kinds of constitutions. And this is a distinction between the codified versus the uncodified constitution. Now, a codified constitution is a constitution which is written down entirely in one place. Again, I refer back to the US Constitution.
It is a single document. It has a number of different articles and a number of different amendments. You can buy a copy of the US Constitution or you can find a copy of the US Constitution online.
And it looks like a document. It is a constitutional document. And so as a result of which we call that constitution a.
codified constitution. On the other hand, an uncodified constitution is one which is not written down in one place. And so some people make the mistake of suggesting that the UK constitution, because that it is uncodified, it means that we say that it is unwritten.
Now this is not actually true. And the reason why is because plenty of the UK constitution is written. It is written down. You can find it on a piece of paper.
When we look at the sources of the UK Constitution, we will note that the sources of the UK Constitution include things like parliamentary statutes, which are of course written down, or the common law, which is of course also written down. The idea here is that it is uncodified, not because it is unwritten, but because it is not written down in one place. You can't hold in your hand the UK Constitution as a single, unified, complete document.
You can't do that. because the UK Constitution is represented and spread across various different sources and various different historical sources, various different types of sources throughout the entire UK. And so to have the UK Constitution all in one place, you would need quite a large library in order to do so. So that's why we say that the UK Constitution is uncodified rather than unwritten. Now in terms of the scope of this series, this series because it is a subject in public law, we're going to be discussing two particular topics.
We're going to be talking about constitutional law and then we're going to be talking about, briefly at least, administrative law. So that is why we're going to divide this series of lessons into two. We're going to talk about constitutional law first, and then we'll talk about the process of administrative law second. This is not going to be a series of lessons dedicated entirely to an in-depth understanding of administrative law.
That is a series of lessons in and of itself. But in order to understand public law, we'll have to talk a little bit about the way in which administrative law relates to the public law environment. So at the beginning of this series we'll look at the introduction and the nature of the UK Constitution. This is going to be a particularly chunky series of lessons in the first topic. We're going to talk about what it is to call something a constitution, we'll talk about the types of constitutions before turning our attention specifically to the UK Constitution itself, examining the UK Constitution as well as its sources.
In addition to this we're also going to talk about some of the fundamental principles. of the UK Constitution. This includes things like parliamentary sovereignty, the idea of constitutional monarchy, the rule of law, the separation of powers, and this idea of quote-unquote quasi-federalism. We will then move on to looking at the various entities and institutions within the UK's constitutional framework, looking specifically at the government of the United Kingdom, the role of Parliament, the role of Westminster, the role of the Executive, the role of the Judiciary, as well as the role of the Crown.
Looking at some of the international aspects of the UK's constitutional frameworks, looking at international law, looking at the European Union, as well as the impact of Brexit and the very famous Miller cases on the Constitution. And then after that, we'll move on to talking about administrative law, beginning with the grounds for judicial review and the subject of administrative law, looking at what judicial review is, looking at the concept of... illegality and ultra virae when it comes to the grounds for judicial review, irrationality, procedural impropriety, and then finally talking about the idea of remedies and administrative justice, the procedure of judicial review, limitations, role of tribunal, the ombudsman, inquiries and regulation.
And then the final topic is probably going to be my favourite topic to teach in all seriousness and this is going to talk about the relationship that is had between the state and the people. This involves looking at an introduction to human rights and civil liberties, an examination of the Human Rights Act, the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Liberties, and then talking about the powers of the police as a public institution, emergency powers, and then finally finishing on public order offences and terrorism. All of those things are going to be covered in this series of lessons.