History of the UK Constitution - Public Law

Now that we've explored the nature of the UK's constitution in a little bit more detail, it's important that we have a better understanding of its history, because the way the constitution is developed is of course a product of its history, in the same way that the way the US constitution developed is a product of its history. The Revolutionary Wars, the American Independence Declaration, and the various different meetings in the Continental Congress to establish the US constitution and the Bill of Rights. In a similar way, in a similar vein, the UK's constitution is as much a product of its history as any other constitutional framework, and given the unique nature of the UK constitution, it signifies the unique nature of the history of England and the history of the United Kingdom. That's what we're going to do in this lesson in a very unbelievably brief manner. Essentially what we're going to do is talk about the UK's historical development of its constitution, and while a history of the UK constitution is far too detailed a conversation to be having in this particular series, we're going to just take a brief overview to look at some of the major implications of it. We'll also talk about the history of the UK constitution in other contexts as well in the future, so for example when we look at the development of parliamentary sovereignty, the impact of the Revolution, and all these different things, that's going to be something of a historical debate as well, and we're also of course going to be talking about the history of the UK constitution in a separate series of lessons specifically on that topic. For our understanding today, however, it is important that we look at the broader historical context in which we can conceptualize our constitution and the development of our constitution, which is the purpose of this series. So given its early history, we're not going to spend too much time looking at it because the main events that we see take place will take place a little bit later on during the events of the tumultuous years of the Stuart dynasty and the development of the Glorious Revolution, but in terms of the early history we can say that the English legal system can be said to have its beginnings within the sort of general period of the Anglo-Saxons and the development of the Anglo-Saxon period, the heptarchy which then develops into a unified England under the reign of King Aethelstan, who is the grandson of Alfred the Great, but it is also the influence of the Roman law which plays into the modern conceptions of the development of the UK's legal system, and in addition to this the groundwork for what eventually becomes known as the common law, the development of the common law system, is found in the 1066 Norman invasion, the establishment of Norman England and the new Norman kings which come after this of this period of Anglo-Saxon Britain. So this is eventually what would eventually ultimately turn into the development of the common law. The common law would also develop through the system of, or at least through the dynasty of the Angevin kings and the Angevin dynasty as well, and the Angevin empire, but for now we'll just talk a little bit about the groundworks from the Norman invasion. The entire constitutional history of England could even be described as a history of the relationship between the crown and the people, the people being a generalised term here, not just representing everyone within society, but in some circumstances representing people in terms of the nobility or specific members of the nobility itself, beginning first with 1215 and Magna Carta. So sometimes referred to as the Great Charter, Magna Carta was a settlement which was agreed upon by the king of the day at the time who was King John of England, and while it is considered one of the earliest documents outlining the relationships between the king and the people, it's a little bit oversimplistic and to an extent inaccurate to make the argument that it is a relationship between the king and the people, in the sense that we're talking about the general population at the time. Rather it was the outlining of the powers and the limitation of powers that the king had and was subjected to with reference to his barons, so specific individuals within the nobility of England. So there was this huge class divide, which does continue in some extent to this day, between the lower classes within society and the higher classes, the members of the nobility within society as well. So this is what Magna Carta essentially does, it outlines some of the limitations of the powers that the king has over and subjected to and over his barons. He was essentially forced to agree to the Magna Carta, no one signed the Magna Carta at first start, it was agreed upon, and even when King John dies, his son Henry III would reissue the charter, keeping some of the most fundamental provisions. Now to this day the provisions which were taken out and added in have changed quite significantly over the years, but since King John the Magna Carta has been an accepted practice throughout the early period of the medieval kings within England and continues to this day in some regards. But it is mostly considered to be a historical document, that is one of the things that is important about Magna Carta, that it is a historical document which influenced a number of documents subsequent to it, including international documents, so things like the US Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution is somewhat influenced by Magna Carta, the ways in which the French Revolution operated within the 1700s also is somewhat influenced by the Magna Carta, as well as a number of Enlightenment ideas as well. Now skipping ahead quite significantly, we're going to make a major jump from the 1200s to the 1600s, when we talk about the major constitutional crisis which takes place in the 17th century, and this was following the English Civil Wars, as well as the monarchal attacks on Parliament, the regicide of King Charles I, the execution of King Charles I, and various numerous constitutional changes which took place and were made in this process. So the constitutional crisis of the 17th century was as much a development pertaining to the relationship between the King and Parliament as anything else, and the relationship between the King and Parliament had been strained and was continuing to be strained following the end of the Tudor period, following the end of the Tudor dynasty in 1603, going into the reigns of James I and then Charles I. Specifically within the idea of taxation, it was considered to be historically the remit of Parliament to issue taxation, even though for the most part Parliament would just follow the will of the monarch in being able to issue taxation at that period, but where Parliament refused to issue further taxation and Charles began to circumvent parliamentary process, we start to see more and more tension develop between the two, which causes an outbreak of the English Civil War, which the parliamentarians ultimately win, King Charles ultimately loses, and then we get the trial of King Charles I, and we get the execution of Charles I, the first instance in the English history where we see the execution of a monarch in this kind of way. Now despite the fact that the revolution of the Civil War took place during this period, it did not lead to a formal and long-lasting settlement with a constitutional document being written up. There was something of a constitution developed during the period of the Republic within Britain, which didn't last particularly very long under Oliver Cromwell as the sort of leader which was a kind of de facto monarchical position, and the reason for this was because, of course, we see a restoration of the monarchy in the 17th century, we see King Charles II take over, we then see the fact that because King Charles II was Catholic and this clashed quite significantly with the Church of England, we see the parliamentarians, the members of parliament inviting William of Orange over to rule as the new King of Britain, which would then instigate the glorious revolution of 1688 and the subsequent Bill of Rights of 1689. But it is quite interesting that where we see revolutions and civil wars take place not quite during the 17th century but more the 18th century, we see that formal documentarian constitutions are established. So things like the U.S. 1776, we see the revolutionary war and we see the Declaration of Independence which leads into the U.S. Constitution. We see constitutions formally being drawn up in France following the French Revolution. We see a constitution, or eventually at least anyway, we see constitutions being drawn up after the German Revolution of 1918 establishing the Weimar dynasty. But this same kind of constitution being drawn up didn't happen in the 17th century, it didn't happen in England. So one of the reasons why this was the case was because in terms of the American Revolution or the French Revolution, the English Revolution and the English Civil Wars didn't technically work in terms of what their goals were ultimately to achieve, which was to overthrow monarchy and to establish a republic. They established a republic for a very brief period but then the monarchy would ultimately be restored. This is unlike the case of the U.S. for example where the monarchy was never restored, we never went back to the English monarchy in the United States and so the result of which was we didn't have this formal long-lasting constitutional document being written up. The power of the crown over parliament would be formally relegated with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and then the subsequent Bill of Rights of 1689. When we talk about the principle of parliamentary sovereignty in future lessons, we will talk about the impact of the Glorious Revolution and the Bill of Rights as the influence for the principle that parliament is the supreme law-making authority within England and Wales, within the UK even more formally. So essentially these events solidified the principle that when it comes to law-making the crown is subordinate to parliament and the people. We're going to take another jump, we're going to go from the 17th century to the early 20th century where we see further democratization take place during this period. This is influenced by significantly the Parliament Acts of 1911 and the Parliament Act of 1949. These both represented a further increase in the influence of democracy specifically within the internal workings of the parliamentary process. So given the fact that we have a bicameral legislature in the United Kingdom where we have two chambers within parliament, we have the unelected upper house which is the House of Lords and we have the elected lower house which is the House of Commons, what the Parliament Acts do from 1911 and the one in 1949 as well is limit the power of the House of Lords quite significantly and this is also done through constitutional conventions so things like the Salisbury Convention add to this as well. But essentially it codifies the principle that the House of Commons because of its democratic legitimacy, because of the fact that it is accountable to the people, because of the fact that it is not appointed, it is elected, is now superior to the House of Lords and this superiority exists and continues to exist in parliament to this day. Finally then let's talk about the end of the 20th century going into the beginning of the 21st century which is of course the New Labour constitutional reforms. The era of New Labour in 1997 would introduce some of the most major constitutional reforms which have significantly shaped the way the constitution operates to this day. You have devolution legislation, devolution legislation establishing a Scottish Parliament, a Welsh Assembly and a Northern Ireland Assembly, quite significant in terms of the ability for Westminster to delegate authority to those particular institutions. You have the Human Rights Act of 1998 which formally brings the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights into the UK's constitutional framework and provides a significant process by which you can challenge the government for potential human rights violations. You also have the Constitutional Reform Act of 2005 which made a number of different changes to the role of the Lord Chancellor which we'll get to in future lessons time and it also establishes a Supreme Court which moves essentially the same individuals the law lords out of the House of Lords across the square into the old Middlesex building and establishes a new Supreme Court. In 1999 you also have the House of Lords Act which removes a number of the hereditary peers all but I believe 74 or 92 I want to say 92 hereditary peers are removed out of the House of Lords. Of course the idea of hereditary peerage is something of a very antiquated and outdated process and system. The idea that you are born into a family which automatically assumes that you have the ability to obtain a peerage in the House of Lords seems quite like I said antiquated and a quite significantly outdated idea and so as a result of that the House of Lords Act removes a number of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords creating quite significant constitutional reforms that were enshrined and established by New Labour from 1997.