What are the advantages and disadvantages of an unwritten constitution in the UK?

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Amandeep Dhaliwal

What are the advantages and disadvantages of an unwritten constitution in the UK?

The UK has an unwritten constitution unlike the U.S.A. Instead Britain’s laws, policies and codes are developed through statutes, common law, convention and more recently E.U law.  It is misleading to call the British constitution unwritten; a more precise form of classification would be un-codified. This means that the British constitution has no single document, which states principles and rules of a state. However, The British constitution clearly sets out how political power is allocated and where it is legally located. The British constitution is still visible and it defines composition and powers of the main offices and institutions of the state. Fundamentally it ‘regulates the relationships between the state and the citizen.’ Bill Coxhall, 1998)

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Britain can be distinguished between those countries which incorporate their major constitutional rules into a single document. Britain is one of few countries which do not have a codified constitution.

The advantage of not having written or codified is that laws and policies are evolutionary and can be easily amended. An example of this is the in-corporation of E.U laws into UK laws. Since parliament passed the European communities Act in 1972 Britain has accepted the superiority of European law. The House of Lords has judged certain English laws to be unlawful in light of EU legislation.

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