Keywords
constitutional conventions
constitutionalism
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Abstract
The word ‘constitution’ had only a descriptive meaning in the United Kingdom, being synonymous with the frame of government in existence before the American revolutionaries changed its sense by identifying it with the supreme law of the land. The United Kingdom does not, and indeed has never had, a constitution. And yet, it does have one, as its government operates under supreme general rules. Those rules are constitutional conventions. The word ‘constitution’ started to change its meaning in the United Kingdom when constitutional conventions emerged as rules that constrained, first, the monarch and then the parliament, in the exercising of their legal powers. In the 18th century the constitution was synonymous with law and unconstitutional behaviour was illegal. This changed in the first half of the 19th century when the British constitution became conventional. What it actually meant in the new environment was that to act in an unconstitutional way meant to act against the established convention, even if a given action was perfectly legal. Nevertheless, the British constitution is predominantly political because the supreme constitutional rules are non-legal and are not enforceable in the courts of law.References
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