The Supremacy of Parliament

A second fundamental principle of our constitution has traditionally been the supremacy of Parliament (also called parliamentary sovereignty). This means that Parliament is the highest source of English law; so long as a law has been passed accord­ing to the rules of parliamentary procedure, it must be applied by the courts. The legal philosopher, Dicey, famously explained that according to the principle of parliamen­tary sovereignty Parliament has ' under the English Constitution, the right to make or unmake any law whatever; and, further, 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'. So if, for example, Parliament had passed a law stating that all newborn boys had to be killed, or that all dog owners had to keep a cat as well, there might well be an enorm­ous public outcry, but the laws would still be valid and the courts would, in theory at least, be obliged to uphold them.

The rule of law

The third basic principle of British constitution is known as the rule of law. It is developed from the writings of the nineteenth-century British jurist and constitutional theorist A. Dicey. According to A. Dicey, the rule of law had three elements. First, that there should be no sanction without breach, meaning that nobody should be punished by the state unless they had broken a law. Secondly, that one law should govern everyone, including both ordinary citizens and state officials. Thirdly, that the rights of the individual were not secured by a written constitution, but by the decisions of judges in ordinary law.

The real importance of the rule of law today lies in the basic idea underlying all three of Dicey's points (but especially the first) that the state should use its power according to agreed rules, and not arbitrarily.

A practice that has recently come to light which appears to breach the rule of law is that of 'extraordinary rendition'. This describes the kidnapping of people by state representatives and their subsequent detention, without recourse to established legal procedures (such as a formal request for the extradition of a suspect). The US intelli­gence service has kidnapped a large number of foreign nationals suspected of involve­ment with the terrorist organisation, Al Qaeda, from around the world and removed them to secret locations without following any established legal procedures. It has been alleged that the UK has provided the US with some assistance in this practice through, in particular, the provision of information about suspects and the use of UK airports.

The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 introduced some major reforms to the British constitution. This Act expressly states in its first section that it 'does not adversely affect... the existing constitutional principle of the rule of law'.

TASK 23. Find the equivalents in the text:

TASK 24. Answer the following questions:

1) What are the functions of different branches of power?

2) What does the separation of powers mean?

3) How do you understand the principle of parliamentary sovereignty?

4) Who can control the legislative activity of Parliament?

5) What are the elements of the rule of law?

6) What are the examples of violation of the rule of law today?

TASK 25. Complete the text using words and word combinations from the table: