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Question: CODIFICATION ESSAY
“There are many reasons why the United Kingdom has a largely written, but uncodified, constitution. Those reasons are historical, political, and cultural. It would be impossible to persuade any major political party to ignore those reasons and to work towards the adoption of a codified constitution for the United Kingdom.”
Critically assess this statement.
Answer: The UK does not have a codified constitution, there is no one single document that describes, establishes and regulates the structure of the state. Instead constitutional order has evolved over time; it consists of various institutions, judicial precedents and practises commonly understood as ‘constitutional’.
The historical reason why the UK constitution has remained uncodified is because of the absence of a constitutional moment. Although New Zealand is considering a codified constitution despite the lack of a constitutional moment, therefore it’s not a prerequisite to codification. In USA a newly independent state gave rise to a codified constitution. In Germany a reconstituted constitution, following World War 2 gave rise to codify. In France the collapse of a regime gave rise to codification. None of this has happened in the UK, even though there were two revolutions in the...(short extract)
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- Subject: Law
- Course: Constitutional and Administrative Law
- Level: Degree
- Year: 1st
- Mark: Not available
- Words: 2449
- Date submitted: May 10, 2016
- Date written: Not available
- References: No
- Document type: Essay*
- Essay ID: 7345
