In countries that actually have a strong constitution—the US is the primary example though I hope others exist—the Constitution itself is the supreme law of the land and is, by design, difficult to amend. When legislatures pass laws that exceed the bounds of the Constitution, the courts strike down those laws as null and void.
In that sense, Britain does not have a constitution. Obviously it has a constitution in some sense, because there is always some set of laws, norms, traditions, and historical precedents that constitute the basis of government. But this is a much weaker sense of the term. For instance, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 was a “constitutional” law that supposedly made it impossible to call a snap election, but a snap election was nonetheless called in 2019 via the Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019, which only required a simple majority because it had equivalent authority to the FTPA itself.
I'm not sure the US is currently a particularly great advertisment for its model of constitutional government. In place of acts of Parliament that have a relatively clear interpretation (and that can be undone or modified by elected representatives), there is legislative deadlock and an endless series of judicial séances attempting to determine whether or not Ben Franklin would have supported gay marriage, abortion rights and concealed carry of MANPADS if he'd been born 300 years later.
It is very odd that after 200 years of independence they realised that they had failed to realised that the constitution granted a right to have an abortion, and then a few decades later realised that it did not after all.
It feels very much that you have a different arm of the government (the judiciary) making laws in place of the legislature.
Historically it also took a while to get the thirteenth amendment so the constitution was pretty seriously flawed for a very long time.
On the other hand the free speech protections are something I envy.
No. Originalism is just a form of textualism; it’s based on the “original public meaning” of the law as written. This is a common misunderstanding. The point of originalism is that you can’t interpret a law written in the 18th century as if it was written in the 21st century because language usage changes over time. There’s no good faith reason for it to be the sort of bogeyman it’s become.
Laws are loosely written to effectively apply to anything and are interpreted by the courts. Sentences are subjectively and unevenly applied depending on the 'circumstances' of the offender.
No, in that sense the UK does not have an American-style constitution - no more, no less. It is not accidental that Parliament can reverse any decision taken by an earlier Parliament: in fact it is one of the most important parts of the constitution that no Parliament can take a decision which binds a later one. It is different from the American design, yes, but the way in which the American constitution is used does not seem praiseworthy, not does it suggest that it would be wise to copy it.
The Bill of Rights begins with the words, "Congress shall make no law..." before enumerating some of the basic human rights that Congress is constitutionally prohibited from infringing. I think it is highly praiseworthy indeed that, unlike Parliament, Congress is constitutionally prevented from infringing on basic human rights. It is also highly praiseworthy that, unlike Parliament, Congress is constitutionally prevented from forming a kangaroo court to sentence the head of state to death or from subsequently installing a military dictatorship (which is the exact historical precedent whence parliamentary supremacy was established).
And how's that going for you at the moment? You have a supreme court which has just decided that the president is effectively outside the reach of the law. This was in response to a case where the outgoing president attempted to overthrow the results of an election and establish a dictatorship.
As for the trial of Charles I - that was anything but a kangaroo court. Great care was taken to give him a fair trial, while establishing the principle that no-one was above the law.
Much better than it is for the UK. Most of the rights protected in the Bill of Rights was carried over from English common law. Britain has since explicitly abolished some of them and openly carves out exceptions to the others. How many people in Britain have been jailed for mean tweets?
> You have a supreme court which has just decided that the president is effectively outside the reach of the law.
That’s a false oversimplification of that ruling.
> As for the trial of Charles I - that was anything but a kangaroo court. Great care was taken to give him a fair trial, while establishing the principle that no-one was above the law.
Charles I, the king, was charged with treason, which was defined prior to that trial as disloyalty to the king. The king was disloyal to the king? It’s complete nonsense and they were clearly making it up as they went along.
The English Civil War was a violent revolution that overthrew the previous system of government and imposed a new one by force of arms. I’m not against that in principle but at least the American revolutionaries were honest that that’s what they were doing.
> When legislatures pass laws that exceed the bounds of the Constitution, the courts strike down those laws as null and void.
Well, that's not actually in the US constitution.
And, the Executive branch is free to ignore what the Judicial branch [1] does since ya know, it's the Executive branch that would execute any decisions.
> Well, that's not actually in the US constitution.
It's a rather simple application of the premises that (a) the Constitution supersedes other statutory laws and (b) the courts have jurisdiction over disputes about the application of the law.
No /s required. You can see a list of landmark judgments here, some of which apply to the UK. (Although you’re confusing the EU with the Council of Europe.)
If you're trying to compare Britain unfavourably to the US with this comment then that doesn't really hold up.
People are sacked all the time in the US for bringing their employer into disrepute, and it doesn't even matter whether they actually did or not, since the employer doesn't have to give a reason anyway.
What? That's a clause with almost every UK contract I've ever signed. The US constitution doesn't touch on employment rights.
Id also point out that the UK is generally an extremely poor country, living standards for the majority are low, income is extremely low after taxes, especially compared to the states.
Britain compares itself unfavourably to the US on almost every metric that matters.
The same as an American citizen, then. That piece of paper locked up in the national archives (or wherever) didn't come running, armed with a gun, to save the life of George Floyd or anyone else.
There is a basis in UK law for freedom of speech (most recently, Article 10 of the Human Rights act). It's true that protections for free speech are not as extensive in the UK as they are in the US, but the US is the outlier in that case. Very few countries have free speech protections as strong as the First Amendment.
The UK laws elaborate on what is and isn't free speech, while the US law basically just says "there shall be free speech (as far as Congress is concerned. Other parties can do whatever they like to stifle speech)"
UK law is extremely loosely defined. Judges are ultimately responsible for its interpretation, which they do relatively literally - so as long as the police and CPS bring a case there's a good chance you've fallen foul of the law, subjectively - which is how they are written. E.g malicious communications act.
The US constitution is even more loosely defined if you exclude the outcome of hundreds of years of judicial interpretations of it. Hence the endless disagreements over what is or isn’t constitutional.
Which must be tosh, you can literally go to prison for years here for stating facts. What if some day somebody takes offence to 2+2=4? The guy who says 2+2=4 goes to jail for years whilst rapists and murders get away with 6 months or suspended sentences. But don't mention that, or else!
