Essay plan. How does the US Constitution protect the individual citizen against the abuse of power by those in authority? Is this an improvement on the UK system?

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TUTORIAL 2 – THE CONSTITUTION

How does the US Constitution protect again the abuse of power by those in authority?

How does the US Constitution protect the individual citizen against the abuse of power by those in authority?

Highlight (and be prepared to discuss) any area of the document which you feel represents an improvement on the unwritten system which we have in the UK.

In order to answer this question it is first necessary to establish what a Constitution is? There is no clear indication or meaning as to what a constitution is however it can be defined as being “a body of rules which regulates the system of government within a state. It establishes the bodies and institutions which form part of that system, it provides for the powers which they are to exercise, it determines how they are to interact and co-exist with one another and ... it is concerned with the relationship between the government and the individual’. In this way the Constitution can be said to have a horizontal relationship (between the various institutions of state) and a vertical relationship (between the state and the individual).

        A Constitution can either be concrete, written down in a document or abstract (set of rules), unwritten.  The concrete form of a constitution is adopted by the majority of states including the US. In the US the written constitution came about after a major political change of securing independence. Its constitution is contained in a single document called the ‘Constitution’.  The UK is different compared to every other country in the world as it does not have a written constitution. The Constitution of the UK is abstract as it cannot be found written down in a single document. It is made up of unwritten rules. It is not codified as the us.  

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Document with special legal sanctity. Higher legal status

The exact contents of a constitution will differ from state to state.

Democratic constitutions should follow the principles of constitutionalism.






Question 1 – Government ministers are both collectively and individually responsible to Parliament for their actions. This accountability is not legal but political.

Control of executive power via judicial review, tribunals, inquiries and Parliamentary ombudsman’s.

Question 2- Parliamentary elections


separation of power control tru courts

Chris Taylors book

A constitution simply means a system of rules. The Constitution of a country sets ...

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