by Naomi Garton

Created on: January 02, 2011   Last Updated: January 04, 2011

The British Constitution today is largely written although uncodified; it is not brought together in a single document, and the absence of this is filled by Parliamentary Sovereignty. The main advantage of this unique constitution is that there are no restrictions on it to change and amend the laws and rights of Britain. In this respect it is flexible, mainly due to the overriding principle of the doctrine of implied repeal. Other advantages of this form of uncodified constitution include the rules and institutions that have developed over time with British society and learned from experience, and have not been spontaneously created in many codified constitutions as a result of some kind of disaster such as a revolution; in France 1789-1799 for example. However, at the reverse of this discussion are some disadvantages to consider such as the legal consequences of such an uncodified constitution where there is no written constitution to secure the fundamental rights of a human being. Only after consideration of both the advantages and disadvantages of an uncodified constitution can one decide whether a major codification of the UK constitution would be favourable. 

The main advantage of an uncodified constitution such as that in the UK is that it is flexible; it can be amended with ease to reflect changes in developing society as it is not entrenched. Unlike states whose constitutions set out complex procedures for constitutional reform like in the United States, in the UK an ordinary Act of Parliament can achieve fundamental reforms. When there has been periods of acute political upheaval such as the crisis over the House of Lords in 1911, it has never been necessary to reconstruct the whole system of government but instead legislation was passed to give effect in law to what was made necessary by the political event, and in this case it was the Parliament Act 1911. 

In juxtaposition to this, is a disadvantage of the uncodified constitution, in that constitutional reform is not based on an integrated programme of reform. For example the Labour government made extensive constitutional changes without placing them in such a programme of reform in 1997 and was criticised for doing so. Despite this, it does not seem favourable to codify the constitution because of this reason, as the advantage of passing laws in response to political events has seen the UK constitution through centuries of political turmoil. There seems therefore, no need to codify

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