TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > Politics > Constitution
Constitution
- Drawn from:
- Statute, common and case law
- European Union
- The Crown
- Types of constitution
- Codified: Constitution in one set place, in a defined, and hard-to change document (USA).
- Uncodified: Drawn from numerous constantly updated sources, and is a collective, rather than single source (UK).
- Federal: Power travels up through regional bodies to the centralised state (USA)
- Unitary: Centralised government makes legislation, and passes it down through local authorities (UK).
- Constitutional government – abides by rules (UK and USA).
- Arbitrary government – unchecked by rules – effective dictatorship (DPRK of North Korea)
| Keep Present System
| Codification
|
Pro-uncodified:
- Flexible
- Modern
- Never been a problem in past
- Public have no problem with it
Anti-codified:
- Hard to agree on
- Inflexible (hard to change)
- Too much power to judges (new interpretations)
| Pro-codified:
- Defines people’s liberties
- Safeguard against tyrannical government
- Public can access and understand easier.
Anti-uncodified:
- Dangerous govt can exploit it
- Hard for public to understand
- Allows civil liberties to be overridden.
|
Potential Questions and key areas to mention
What is a constitution? (5)
- A set of rules, which a government must abide by.
- Essentially defines the powers and functions of government institutions.
- States the relationship of the state to civil liberties and the individual.
Distinguish between a codified and uncodified constitution. (15)
- Codified – in one place, can be collection of different types of rules. Entrenched, and extremely difficult to amend and change, in comparison to an uncodified modification.
- (eg. USA comprises of the Bill of Rights, Patriot Act)
- Uncodified - an ever-growing assortment of different documents, which are not collected into one place. Not entrenched into the political system, therefore is more flexible (eg. UK – drawn from Magna Carta, HRA)
Analyse the advantages of an uncodified constitution (30)
- Pro uncodified:
- It is flexible, and can be constantly added to (example recent devolution constitution changes was made much easier as it is uncodified constitution).
- Has been effective for a number of years, and never had a tyrannical
- Government appeared in the modern era (despite tabloid opinion, Thatcher and Blair were tyrannical leaders!).
- The public are content without knowing the intricacies of the constitution (only liberals and Charter88 show much interest in constitutional reform).
- Anti-codified:
- It could never be agreed on. A codified constitution often appears after a revolution or significant political change, and a peacetime codification would just take too long to debate out, without a common goal (e.g. USA was declaring independence and a start to self-government).
- Judges would have to set a whole set of new interpretations, and would give them too much power, and would be time consuming.
- Too inflexible – would freeze contemporary ideas into the constitution.
(Model answers above are extracted from an Edexcel Mark Scheme.)
Comments
These notes are aimed at people studying for Edexcel A Level Politics, module 2.
Originally submitted by mattey on TSR Forums.
