Are Constitutional Conventions Necessary To Preserve The Legal Structure Of Government? Illustrate By Example
Introduction
A constitutional convention is an informal and uncodified procedural agreement that is followed by the institutions of a state. The Constitution of a country comprises both written rules enforced by courts, and "unwritten" rules or principles necessary for constitutional government. Written rules mandate that they be followed in a particular specified situation, and on the other hand unwritten rules come into play when there is no given written rule to cover the situation at hand. Constitutional conventions are said to be rules of political practice, which are regarded as binding by those to whom they apply, but they can't be called exact laws, as they are not enforced by courts or by the Houses of Parliament. Notwithstanding the fact that ours is a detailed Constitution, the Constitution-framers left certain matters to be governed by conventions, thereby giving to the holders of constitutional offices some degree of discretion in respect of such matters.
The main purpose of the Constitutional conventions is to ensure that the legal framework of the Constitution retains its flexibility to operate in tune with the prevailing constitutional values of the period. Although conventions are not legally enforceable and the sanction behind them is moral and political, yet some conventions of the constitution which set norms of behavior of those in power or which regulate the working of the various parts of the Constitution and their relations to one another, may be as important, if not of greater significance, as the written word of the Constitution itself. This is particularly true of the role of 'conventions' in a system of Parliamentary democracy having a Constitutional distribution of powers between two or more levels of Government.
Often constitutional conventions are more important than written