"Does the United Kingdom Still Have a Constitution?" by Anthony King

Résumé du document

"Does the United Kingdom Still Have a Constitution?" is a book written by Anthony King. It is composed of four chapters based on the Hamly Lectures delivered at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in 2000. The book also contains a short chapter written by John Bridge about the Hamlyn Trust where he talks about the founding of this cycle of lecturers, its development, and its members. This work seeks to identify the main changes in the British constitution answer the question asked in the title: "Does the United Kingdom Still Have a Constitution?" The author begins by exposing the organization and the aims of the book. The first step concerns the nature of the changes he will be dealing with. In fact, King explains that he will concentrate on the most important changes and ignore the trivial ones.

Extraits

[...] The author even considers this as one of the most important features of the British traditional constitution. feature of British political doctrine was more deeply entrenched under the traditional constitution than the belief that the people should not take part in policy decisions.”[9] Even the idea of referendums was not welcomed. The text provides a number of examples that testify that referendums were met with total rejection. Among the examples mentioned are the 1945 proposed referendum about whether the coalition should continue or not. [...]

[...] As a result of this act, the House of Lords neither here nor there”[8]. The body of the House of Lords was dominated by members of the party that won the majority in governments. When conservatives, for example, dominated the government the body of the House of Lords would dominantly consist of conservative members. After discussing the role of parliament, with its two chambers, the author moves to discuss the role of the people. They did not have an important role in decision making under the traditional constitution. [...]

[...] For the author the reason for not having a volume of federalist papers is that no one is able to write such a volume because the New British Constitution lacks a plan. There is no reasonable relation that links the laws that compose the constitution. Besides, it does not have an inventor or a planner. As Anthony King explains it “just happened”. The book is a well built study of the transformations that the British Constitution had known and the ones that are probably to take place in the future. [...]

[...] New institutions had emerged. At the level of the European Union, for example, there is the Council of Ministers, the European Union Commission, the Court of Justice, and finally The European Parliament. The power of British government was restricted by these European institutions. There are other centres of power such as the local governments in Edinburgh and Cardiff that grew more autonomous with time. There is also the increase of judicial review as a witness of the increasingly efficient independent judicial power. [...]

[...] Another big change would be the creation of new governmental institutions. There is also the possibility of reforming the House of Lords. Ultimately, a freedom of information act might be voted which would make political information accessible to the public. These transformations are for the future as well as the increasing tension between Scotland and England. The author studies the sources that might increase this tension. Scotland has always been described as over-represented in British Parliament. Thus, plans to reduce the number of Scottish MP's are probably being arranged. [...]