Britain's Enduring Constitution...At the Moment

As a student of British history and politics and the son of a proud Brit, it's hard for me to resist the urge to gush over the UK and its political institutions. As Beth sardonically put it, "Oh Britannia." But swooning aside it's fair to say that at this stage Britain has produced one of the most stable forms of government currently in existence. It's adherence to the norms that have been produced over the centuries coupled with a flexibility for democratically ushered change gives the British in the words of Sir Winston Churchill "an envied and enviable situation." These norms are what Wright would call "the rules of political game" or the constitution. How long is this is unwritten form going to be effective?

In the past constitutional struggles either led to one side backing down or to armed conflict. The latter situation is typified by the deposition of Charles I in the English Civil War and then later his own son, James II, in the admittedly bloodless "Glorious Revolution." It would hardly be acceptable today for constitutional issues to be decided by the modern equivalents of the sword, but as history has gone on the British system has proved largely capable of keeping conflict in Parliament. In 1911 after unconstitutionally defeating a budget bill the House of Lords was forced to accept the Parliament Act of 1911, the first legal reform of the peers' amalgamated powers. This is only one example, but Britain has abandoned it's more bloody constitutional traditions.

In its place the Law Lords (also members of the House of Lords) has taken their place as the supreme judicial arbiter of constitutional issues. At the moment they hear appeals from lower courts in a committee separate from the main body, but in 2009 according to the Constitutional Reform Act of 2005 the Law Lords will be hearing appeals quite literally as the "Supreme Court of the United Kingdom." This has posed and will continue to pose a new problem. The court does not have an American style power of judicial review over Acts of Parliament. It can declare them unconstitutional, but Parliament can to choose to repeal or amend the law or not. The court is also responsible for enforcing binding decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice. Wright does note that Britons were largely ignorant of the constitutional implications of EU membership and contends the issue "remains immense and undeniable."

The judicial actions I have described are the necessary hallmark of written constitutions, which are legal documents. As was said the British constitution is a set of non-legal norms in addition to the legal structure of government. It is not out of line to say that Britain's peculiar constitutional system is imperiled by EU membership and the creation of a constitutional court. Wright quite rightly stated "the old doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty was effectively blown out of the water" when Britain joined the EU. However, legally this is all reversible. The UK may still withdraw from the EU at its own insistence, and the soon-to-be Supreme Court still has only what I would call an advisory power concerning parliamentary acts. It seems though that the political and economic incentives for "an ever deepening union" in Europe may prove too much for the British constitution.