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The constitution of the United Kingdom comprises the written and unwritten arrangements that establish the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a political body. Unlike in most countries, no official attempt has been made to codify such arrangements into a single document, thus it is known as an uncodified constitution .
The constitution of the United Kingdom is an uncodified constitution made up of various statutes, judicial precedents, convention, treaties and other sources. [1] Beginning in the Middle Ages, the constitution developed gradually in response to various crises. By the 20th century, the British monarchy had become a constitutional and ceremonial ...
The United Kingdom constitutional law concerns the governance of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. With the oldest continuous political system on Earth, the British constitution is not contained in a single code but principles have emerged over centuries from common law statute , case law , political conventions and ...
The constitution consists of legislation, common law, Crown prerogative and constitutional conventions. Conventions may be written or unwritten. They are principles of behaviour which are not legally enforceable, but form part of the constitution by being enforced on a political, professional or personal level.
A codified constitution is a constitution that is contained in a single document, which is the single source of constitutional law in a state. An uncodified constitution is one that is not contained in a single document, but consists of several different sources, which may be written or unwritten.
An integral part of the UK constitution, human rights derive from common law, from statutes such as Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Human Rights Act 1998, from membership of the Council of Europe, and from international law . Codification of human rights is recent, but the UK law had one of the world's longest human rights traditions.
Constitutional history is the area of historical study covering both written constitutions and uncodified constitutions, and became an academic discipline during the 19th century. The Oxford Companion to Law (1980) defined it as the study of the "origins, evolution and historical development" of the constitution of a community.
It is a feature of the peculiarly UK conception of the separation of powers that Parliament, the executive and the courts each have their distinct and largely exclusive domain. Parliament has a legally unchallengeable right to make whatever laws it thinks right. The executive carries on the administration of the country in accordance with the ...