Sources of Law
The Historical Background to the English Legal System
The United Kingdom
The United Kingdom (UK) is divided into four regions: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern
Ireland. Each of these regions can be thought of as a country. However, the UK is one state not a federation of states (as in a federal state like the US or Australia) because all the separate parts are subject to the UK Parliament. This is said to have sovereign power. This means that it is subject to no higher legal authority and has the power and authority to make laws for all the separate parts of the UK. In a federal state, the parts reserve powers to themselves.
England, Wales and Scotland (without Northern Ireland) are sometimes referred to together as
Britain. But Britain or Great Britain also sometimes refers to the whole of the UK including the many islands that surround it and are part of the country.
The UK does not have a written Constitution. That is to say, there is no single document called a
Constitution that allots political power and defines human rights. A number of uncoordinated documents have this function; some are statutes and decisions of the courts that are part of the law, others are not. Statutes, i.e. laws made by the UK Parliament, define part or the whole of certain political areas. These include the right to vote, human rights, the powers of the House of Commons and House of Lords (and who can be a member of the Houses of Commons and House of Lords), and the powers of the courts. We will look at the most important constitutional documents that are
not statutes or court decisions in this Unit.
The constitutional documents as a whole are uncoordinated in the sense that they have come about at different historical times and for different reasons: they do not refer to one another and some, as mentioned above, do not have the status (strictly speaking) of law, their authority is based on tradition. That is why it is necessary to have some
The United Kingdom
The United Kingdom (UK) is divided into four regions: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern
Ireland. Each of these regions can be thought of as a country. However, the UK is one state not a federation of states (as in a federal state like the US or Australia) because all the separate parts are subject to the UK Parliament. This is said to have sovereign power. This means that it is subject to no higher legal authority and has the power and authority to make laws for all the separate parts of the UK. In a federal state, the parts reserve powers to themselves.
England, Wales and Scotland (without Northern Ireland) are sometimes referred to together as
Britain. But Britain or Great Britain also sometimes refers to the whole of the UK including the many islands that surround it and are part of the country.
The UK does not have a written Constitution. That is to say, there is no single document called a
Constitution that allots political power and defines human rights. A number of uncoordinated documents have this function; some are statutes and decisions of the courts that are part of the law, others are not. Statutes, i.e. laws made by the UK Parliament, define part or the whole of certain political areas. These include the right to vote, human rights, the powers of the House of Commons and House of Lords (and who can be a member of the Houses of Commons and House of Lords), and the powers of the courts. We will look at the most important constitutional documents that are
not statutes or court decisions in this Unit.
The constitutional documents as a whole are uncoordinated in the sense that they have come about at different historical times and for different reasons: they do not refer to one another and some, as mentioned above, do not have the status (strictly speaking) of law, their authority is based on tradition. That is why it is necessary to have some