by Carissa Kane

Created on: February 18, 2009

According to KC Wheare a Constitution is "the whole system of government, the collection of rules which establishes and regulates or governs the government."

It is a tenet which governs the actions of government ensuring that they are lawful. It implies something far more important than the idea of legality which requires official conduct to be in accordance with prefixed rules. More importantly, a constitution will vary with society.

No where is that above stated definition does it say that this masterpiece must be written, does it? No! Many have queried whether the United Kingdom does indeed have a constitution given the fact that there is no strict or fixed document named "Constitution". However both Sir Ivor Jennings and A.V. Dicey state that the United Kingdom does indeed have a constitution and that it can be elsewhere other than in a single written document.

The main sources of the United Kingdom constitution are found in Statute, Common Law, European Community Law, Conventions and Literary Sources as in writings of the famous author, mentioned above, A.V. Dicey. There is no single document outlining one's constitutional rights. And why should there be one?

Firstly, the UK is a unitary state with Parliament sitting at Westminster being the only body competent to legislate for the UK. Secondly, all laws in the UK including laws relating to the constitution may be enacted, repealed or amended by the Queen in Parliament. There is no specific procedure for changing the law, that is, very important law can be changed by simple majority. This simply means that the decision making process is not stifled in any way by past legislation.

Outside of these obvious points, the fact that the United Kingdom has an unwritten constitution has caused concern since there is no one document that stands alone but this is what makes it so unique. It has somehow managed to function quite efficiently and past the tests of time in being a long lasting system of governance. Where concerns arise, the nature of this unwritten constitution has proved to iron out itself and work quite nicely.

One concern is the power of the Queen. Although the Queen is head of state and retains many of the powers of the government, by "Convention" these powers are exercised in her name by her ministers, hence the term Constitutional Monarchy, as what is used to describe the United Kingdom. These conventions are many and run along side "Statute." These are the procedures that have been developed and are

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