Should the UK have fully written constitution

Should the UK Have fully written constitution?

UK has partly an unwritten and uncodified constitution. Such a system, like any other, has their advantages and disadvantages, but because of their unusual system there are a lot of disputes around it. A big question at hand is: “Should the constitution be fully written or not?” A codified constitution means that all the points and laws are written and could be read, such a constitution typically occurs at some critical moment in a country’s history. An uncodified constitution is one that was formed naturally with historical development. In order to assess, whether UK should have a codified constitution it is necessary to consider such issues like flexibility and entrenchment, clarity and constitutional sources, historical development.

The British constitution is quite flexible and all its constitutional laws are not guarded from changes. Any change could be made by the parliament who are the main and the most powerful body in the British political system. Parliament has ultimate legal authority and freedom to make and enforce any political decisions without limits; so any law can be easily changed with a simple act of Parliament. Sometimes such simple procedures are convenient and even essential. This was shown when on the election on May in 2010 were there was no elected majority from any party. Such a situation was not mentioned in the constitution, but because of the adaptable possibility of the UK constitution, a solution for such a problem was found very quickly. However it makes Parliament too powerful, in that in spite of rule of the law, the possibility to change laws places parliament above it. Theoretically, this goes against all democratic principles that the British political system is based on. In my opinion, every legally guarded constitution in reality could be manipulated or even ignored by the leadership of the country, therefore the only real protection for the constitution there are the people, because the English Parliament, like any government in every democratic country, it is elected by the people to protect their interests and they could be easily abolished by them. Citizens could ignore laws which are against their rights or are not approved by them hence parliament has real political power to facilitate changes on basic constitutional laws as long as the people agree to follow these changes. No matter, what laws the parliament pass, in the context of the constitution or not, the public have the last say as it affects them and because of their power to abolish current parliament. Although the UK constitution is not protected legally, it protected politically.

Another important question is quantity of constitutional sources and clarify. UK constitution has a lot of sources such a: Parliamentary statues, Constitutional conventions, common low, historical principles and authoritative works, traditions, EU laws. Such big quantity of sources makes constitution vague and unclear. If constitution is not fully written in one single document there is no way for citizens to be fully aware of their rights, because part of them unwritten and undetermined, and as result people`s rights are not fully circumscribed. So, lack of knowledge amongst the people caused deficient level of protecting civil liberties, what is inadmissible for democratic country. Uncodified constitution is not clarified for citizens; they do not understand the concept of it, because it has not any concrete form. However, any codified constitution cannot contain every possible situation and suggest solution for every problem. Advantage of unwritten British constitution, which develop historically, that for such long period of time a lot of issues happened and solutions for them were found, and even if they were not written, they become a part of constitution and do not need to be discussed any more. This, again, was illustrated clearly with the May 2010 election, because even if principle of coalition between two parties and combined govern is not usual for UK politic system, constitution, which was so easily changed to react on changing circumstances, have fixed rules to deal with situation now. It is hard to imagine that somebody can predict all, such unusual problems and find effective solution for all of them. So, even if some issues are not written as a document and cannot be protected in court there are some norms, which developed traditionally, and cannot be all written. It is not a serious problem as long as such system works.

The main strength of UK constitution is that it was developed naturally, historically. It provides a coherent system and establishes relations between all political institutions in country, which were set naturally. What even more important, is that system was evolved over the time and accorded by British people. Every process and power separation was set in the right time and without public discontents. Power came from Monarch to public, from one person to people, which is natural process, it is how democracy works, its main principle, and such procedure took place in every European country, but in England it was the most calm and natural process. Exclude Oliver Cromwell, who was quite cruel to current king, English people were not tortured by any dictator. In contrast, almost every country in Europe has period of dictate, totalitarianism and terror in their history, so their low does not work as good as English. The typical problem of old constitutions is its fixed principle that not actual now, UK constitution has not this problem because of their adaptability and flexibility. It was shown clearly by the House of Lords Act of 1999. The main power and the last say always was in Lords and monarchs hands, an in case if UK constitution was fully written and inflexible, it would be hard to change this order, it could be a lot of discussions because of it or even military conflict, because nobody wants to let their power gone, well known how Russian royal family react on try to take their authority out of them, and how horrible were consequences for them and the whole country. In England, when Parliament decided to take some power from House of Lords they did it very easy, quite fast and without great difficulty or efforts for such important act. So, UK constitution works very good, better than a lot of codified constitutions, and “if it ain`t broke, don`t fix it”.

Because of all arguments shown above, I think that UK constitution should not be fully written. It works not worse than any written constitution, their low respected by politics and population not less that written. Every bills, rules, and even fixed lows work as long as people want to follow them, no matter they written or no, if government wants to flaunt democratic procedures that fact that all lows written does not stop it. Britain has survive very well until now with unwritten constitution, and it shows that such type of constitution is suitable for English public, and in fact it guard civil rights very well, it provide very high level of life for citizens, higher that a lot of countries with codified constitutions do. So I do not see enough important reasons to codify it.