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Should Britain Have a Written Constitution?
Author(s) -
BOGDANOR VER,
KHAITAN TARUNABH,
VOGENAUER STEFAN
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
the political quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.373
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1467-923X
pISSN - 0032-3179
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-923x.2007.00879.x
Subject(s) - constitution , sovereign immunity , law , constitutional interpretation , interpretation (philosophy) , doctrine , political science , sovereignty , sociology , philosophy , politics , linguistics
The question ‐ ought Britain to have a written, more properly, a codified constitution ‐ is perhaps wrongly put. The real question ought to be ‐ why should Britain not have such a constitution… She is, after all, one of just three democracies without one. There are two reasons why Britain has lacked a constitution. The first is that, historically, Britain never had a constitutional moment; the second is the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. Today, however, Britain finds herself engaged in the process of gradually converting an uncodified constitution into a codified one. There is undoubtedly a case in principle for enacting a constitution, but perhaps it ought to wait until the process is completed. There is, moreover, a tension between two types of codified constitution ‐ a lawyer's constitution which would be long and highly detailed, and a people's constitution which would be short, but, inevitably, broadly‐worded, and therefore open to interpretation by the courts.