The Purposes and Characteristics of Constitutions

Vocabulary flashcards covering the purposes, nature, definitions, amendment mechanisms, and major historical/statutory landmarks of constitutions, with a specific focus on the UK constitutional system.

Constitutional Law

The body of law that determines the exercise and control of governmental power between the institutions of government, as well as between those institutions and the individual.

Constitution (Finer, Bogdanor, and Rudden Definition)

Codes of norms which aspire to regulate the allocation of powers, functions, and duties among the various agencies and officers of government, and to define the relationship between these and the public.

Constitution (Anthony King's Definition)

The set of rules and common understandings relating to the composition and conduct of government that currently exist.

Constitution (J. A. G. Griffith's Definition)

The view that 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.

Constituent Power

An authority outside and above the governmental order it establishes—in democracies attributed to the people—on whose ratification and collective endorsement the legitimacy of a constitution depends.

F. F. Ridley's Central Characteristics of a Constitution

A four-part prescriptive definition requiring that a constitution must: (1) be prior to the government it establishes; (2) derive its force from constituent power; (3) be superior to ordinary law; and (4) be entrenched against ordinary legislative revision.

Parliamentary Sovereignty

A foundational doctrine of the UK system holding that parliamentary legislation is the highest law of the land, meaning Parliament possesses omnipotence to make or unmake any law by a simple majority vote and cannot bind its successors.

Codified Constitution

A constitution in which the vast majority of fundamental constitutional rules are assembled into a single, comprehensive, and easily identifiable written legal document titled 'The Constitution'.

Non-Codified Constitution

A constitutional order—such as in the UK, Israel, or New Zealand—where constitutional rules are not contained in a single document, but are drawn from a multiplicity of statutes, judicial precedents, conventions, and international obligations.

Entrenchment

The constitutional mechanism that insulates constitutional rules from amendment or repeal through the ordinary legislative process, placing fundamental legal principles beyond the reach of temporary majorities.

Constitutional Statute

A class of UK legislation recognised by the courts (e.g., in Thoburn v Sunderland City Council) as possessing especial constitutional significance for governmental power or individual rights, distinguishing it from ordinary enactments.

Executive Branch

The branch of the state typically referred to as the government, comprising the Prime Minister and Ministers of the Crown, tasked with administering policy and carrying out laws.

Legislature

The law-making body of the state (in the UK, Parliament) empowered to enact rules for governance in the form of legislation or statutes.

Judiciary

The branch of the state tasked with determining the outcome of legal disputes fairly and finally, providing institutional structures for resolving conflicts between private entities or between the citizen and the state.

Ministerial Responsibility

A UK constitutional convention requiring Ministers of the Crown to present themselves to Parliament to account for their policies, successes, and failings in response to parliamentary questions and scrutiny.

Doctrine of Political Questions

A principle of US constitutional interpretation traced to Marbury v Madison (1803) holding that questions political in nature are most appropriately resolved by elected branches rather than adjudicated by the courts.

Organic Constitutional Development

The process by which the UK Constitution has evolved gradually over centuries through incremental legal and political responses to events, rather than being enacted all at once in the wake of war or revolution.

Sir Ivor Jennings's Building Analogy

The metaphor comparing the development of the UK Constitution to the continuous invention, renovation, and partial reconstruction of a house that is constantly adapted across centuries without being razed to the ground.

German Basic Law (Grundgesetz)

The post-World War II constitution of Germany adopted in 1949, comprising approximately $22,000$ words, animated by a resolve to serve world peace in a united Europe.

Article 79 of the German Basic Law

The entrenchment provision requiring that constitutional amendments achieve the support of a $\frac{2}{3}$ majority of votes cast in the Bundestag and a $\frac{2}{3}$ majority of votes cast in the Bundesrat.

Article V of the United States Constitution

The entrenchment clause requiring that constitutional amendments receive endorsement from a $\frac{2}{3}$ supermajority in Congress and approval from $\frac{3}{4}$ of the States.

Bill of Rights 1689

A landmark constitutional statute resulting from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that established the legal supremacy of Parliament over the monarch and curtailed monarchical prerogative power.

Act of Settlement 1701

A historic constitutional statute establishing Parliament's legal authority to regulate the line of royal succession and dictate the conditions governing the identity of the monarch.

Royal Assent Convention

The constitutional convention requiring the monarch to formally grant royal assent to legislative proposals passed by Parliament, which has been observed without exception since 1708.

Parliament Act 1911

A foundational statute that established the legal supremacy of the elected House of Commons over the unelected House of Lords.

Constitutional Reform Act 2005

A major constitutional statute that created the United Kingdom Supreme Court in 2009 and formally dismantled the historic judicial appellate functions of the House of Lords.

Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011

A UK statute that removed the prerogative power of the Prime Minister to unilaterally dictate the date of a general election, establishing scheduled parliamentary terms.

Judicial Review

The legal mechanism through which courts exercise supervisory jurisdiction over the executive, determining whether decisions taken by public officials are lawful and within their granted constitutional powers.

R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017]

A landmark constitutional ruling emphasizing that the UK possesses its own enforceable constitutional law that distributes decision-making authority and subjects public power to the rule of law.