Constitutional & Administrative Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Constitutional & Administrative Law - Essay Example Political scientists refer to this law as "Organic", due to the fact that it has been "evolving" over time from its medieval origins. It has been observed that, this flexibility makes it responsive to political and social change, especially through political principles expressed in conventions. Until recently there was no modern statute or document that attempted to codify the rights of citizens in the UK, despite the fact that there is the tradition of freedom of speech and other rights in the UK, common law precedents being the main source of "rights". Common law has been remedied in recent years, with the incorporation of some important written sources, such as European Union law and the European Convention on Human Rights. These laws has formally granted the citizens of UK with rights that were previously lacking in the legal system. These sources are enacted in the European Communities Act 1972 and Human Rights Act 1998, respectively. Different opinions has come up from people on different walks of life on these changes. Some argue that these developments, and the Labour government's reforms from 1997, have improved the constitution, despite the lack of a central, written, entrenched constitutional document. Labour's reform programme has conducted many reforms, including the Human Rights Act, devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, partial reform of the House of Lords and a Freedom of Information Act. Parliamentary Sovereignty, is often called as a particularly elusive concept, is the paramount Principle in the United Kingdom's unwritten constitution and Dicey's (Dicey, AV, An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution) legal theory holds that, "Parliament has the right to make or unmake any law whatever"; and that "no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament." Sir William Wade (Wade HWR, "The Basis of Legal Sovereignty") takes the definition further by stating that: "there is one and only one, limit to Parliament's legal power: it cannot detract from its own continuing sovereignty." (Jennings, I, (1959), The Law and the Constitution, 5thedn, chapter 4) In the recent times, the political supremacy of Parliament in UK has been affected by membership of international organisations such as NATO and the IMF, the legal sovereignty, in that Parliament alone makes the law, has notionally, remained absolute. The introduction of the European Communities Act 1972 (ECA 1972) and the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA 1998) into our domestic law, has to a large extent raised questions about the consequences on that 'absolute' legal sovereignty. Here let us consider the constitutional implications of both these Acts and analyse their impact on the principle of Parliamentary Sovereignty. With the inclusion of UK in the European Community, by virtue of the Treaty of Accession in 1972, it so happened that, Parliament recognised that as a condition of membership, thereby, it had necessarily limited its own sovereign authority by effectively 'pooling sovereignty' with the other Member states.( Costa v ENEL and Amministrazione delle Finanze dello