British Constitutionalism Redux

Abstract

In the past five years, the United Kingdom has seen a massive shift in the organisation of its public institutions and constitutional arrangements. It has gone from a polity which takes parliamentary sovereignty as the natural, unquestionable order to one where institutional power and responsibility are blurred and the ultimate source of power comes not from the Palace of Westminster, but from the people: a transition from a nation of subjects to a nation of citizens. For a nation whose constitution is unwritten and where change has been irregular and piecemeal, this is a major upheaval.This article discusses whether, within the matrix of reform of the British Constitution, there has been a macro redefinition of the institutions of state. If — as this article suggests — there has been, can the United Kingdom still use traditional conceptions of parliamentary supremacy as the basis for its constitutional foundation? Drawing on the programs of devolution, the introduction of a human rights regime and the continuing emergence (and dominance) of European law, it is argued that there is an increasing chasm between such constitutional traditions and the newly minted British state. The ultimate result of this change, of this new architecture of public law, is a new regime to determine the constitutional validity of legislation, allowing the British Constitution to truly evolve as an instrument of national government and popular sovereignty.