Assess the strengths of the UK constitution (25 marks) Essay

The first way that the Constitution helped with the weaknesses of the United States were the different ways it made passing laws more fair. When amending a document the Articles of Confederation needed 13 out of 13 people to approve of the document. The Constitution provided a more reasonable way by having ⅔ of both houses and ¾ of the state legislature. This is a better method because not 100% of people are going to agree on everything. The same type of thing worked when passing laws. 9/13 people needed to approve in the Articles of Confederation while it’s now 50% +1 of both houses plus the signature of the President. This allows for things to be more fair and it makes sure everyone in power somewhat agrees on what is going on and not just a couple of people are deciding on what the citizens new laws will be.

Constitutions are a necessary tool because they are the basic law of a state or nation that

The executive can exercise significant control over the legislative process in the House of Commons. Therefore power is concentrated amongst representatives who have been democratically elected and have a mandate to govern in place of appointed judges or bureaucrats who cannot be held accountable. A codified constitution would place constraints on the government making it less decisive and therefore less strong because government would be reluctant to act in case it is seen as opposing the constitution.

An advantage of the UK constitution is that it takes into account of changing views. For example, in 1997 the changing of the hereditary peer system and also further reforms to change the structure of parliament. It is good that the British constitution will always takes into account these changes. However, there are disadvantages to an un-written constitution.

Federalism and the checks and balances of the three branches of government prevented any abuse of power to rise in the new government. The division of responsibilities and the flexibility in the Constitution allowed for an effective and efficient way of regulating the system. The Constitution gave the people what they wanted in the first place from breaking away from Great Britain through a Bills of Rights and amendable Constitution, a system that served the best interest of the people. Because the Constitution provided a barrier against power abuse, was effective and efficient, and served the best interest of the people, it should be

The Constitution was the reason why tyranny was avoided. Separation of powers makes sure the power is equally divided between the branches. Federalism makes sure not one government can accumulate. Checks and balances makes sure each branch has control over each other. The Constitution had been governing our country for 230 years. It is a model for other

The Constitution is a better document that protected the liberties of the citizens of America. The reason is that after review of the Articles we see a lot of issues with how they tried not to be like the British parliament but needed up similar to how they manage their government. Also other reasons it wasn’t a strong document was because it seem like an inexperience on certain subject as for example the Articles had no executive branch but in the constitution now there is an executive branch. The major reason I see that the constitution was good for the liberties were because of the check and balance proposal. Running a government, the constitution is a stronger document that hits every issue including liberties for citizens. For example, dispute between states; they issued that problem to Congress according to the Articles. In the

The Constitution was made to avoid tyranny. They wanted to create a government that avoids having too much power to a person or a group. They also wanted to create a government that wasn’t to weak to support the nation. The Constitution guards against tyranny by creating checks over the branches, giving power to the central government and the states, and creating the three branches separate and distinct.

The constitution first started to provide protection over tyranny in the summer of 1787 where fifty-five delegates met in Philadelphia to help readjust the national government for the better. The task of each representative was to come together to create ideas without letting one person or any one group be in hold of too much power in order for the central government to grow stronger. The constitution had help led by the Articles of Confederation with their influence on not having a court system to make the state force a pay on taxes. The main challenge was to generate a Constitution that would be strong enough to retain possession of power for each state to a minimum so not a single person was the only one to have power or control. The guard on tyranny was supported in 4 ways federalism,separation of powers, checks and balances and small/large state compromises.

In this essay, I would like to analyse why the reform of the British constitution is seen as unfinished business. Constitutional reform is when the system of government and how government institutions interact is changed. This has also meant the codification of some components of the constitution in the UK. Between 1997 and 2007, there were a considerable number of constitutional reforms introduced by the Blair governments. These reforms included devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, decentralisation, reform of the House of Lords and Commons, creations of new legislation granting greater freedom and rights within the UK, and so on. However, some of them are yet to be accomplished or in progress related to the electoral and

‘The absence of a written constitution ... enables constitutional change to be brought about within the United Kingdom with the minimum of constitutional formality.’

Any nationwide endeavor across the world over is always faced with a myriad of challenges when one factor in, the interest of different individuals or groups. During the early years of the USA, there were many problems that politicians at the time faced when trying to create and strengthen the country’s Constitution. In the early 1780’s the young country was in a deep depression, and this played a key role in influencing the exercise as it ultimately led to a heated debate about the powers of the National and State governments. Most of the conservative politicians at the time preferred a stronger federal government while state radicals believed that states should have more power since it was in a better position to determine what was best for their citizens (Jilson, 2009). More sticking points divided the founding fathers which threatened the stability and establishment of the USA, such as slavery and federalism.

A constitution is a set of rules which may be written or unwritten, establishes the distribution of power in a political system, the limits of government jurisdiction, the rights of citizens and the method of amending the constitution itself. An uncodified constitution is unwritten, or at least not written all in one document. The constitution in the UK is found in a variety of sources which are mainly statute and common law, conventions and traditions, European law etc. There are arguments for the UK to both retain an uncodified constitution and to change this to a codified constitution like the USA. Some of the arguments for retaining the uncodified system are that; codification produces

Without this, a government could remove rights too easily with an overall majority by simply introducing a Bill and relying on its parliamentary majority to pass it. For example, since the attack on the twin towers in the USA on 11 September 2001, the government has been able to persuade parliament to pass an anti-terrorist legislation which goes against certain rights despite the UK having a Human Rights Act (1998). As a result, for example, a number of asylum seeks have been detained without trial. Under a codified constitution they would be unable to introduce this legislation to restrict people’s rights and the only way to do this is to amend the constitution which would be difficult and a lengthy process. Parliamentary sovereignty is slowly diminishing in the UK and a codified constitution would not only decrease government sovereignty, but also increase sovereignty of the

The United Kingdom (UK) is one of the longest living monarchies in Europe and has the longest Parliament. In legislative terms, the UK is a non-federal state that is composed of three countries (England, Scotland and Northern Ireland) and one principality (Wales) (Slapper & Kelly, 2008). Surprisingly, UK is one of the few countries that do not have a written constitution: however, UK has a body of law that is of constitutional significance. Furthermore, UK law is also not codified, process