The British Constitution, which has a number of characteristic features, is a unique phenomenon in the modern world.
The first feature is its historical nature: as a combination of legislative norms, precedents and customs that determine the structure and powers of the authorities, the nature of the relationship between the state and citizens of the country, the British Constitution evolved gradually.
The second distinguishing feature of the British Basic Law is its flexibility. To review any constitutional norms, it is not necessary to go through the complex and lengthy procedure for amending (supplementing) practiced in other countries. The flexibility of the constitution does not mean its instability. The guarantee of stability of the Basic Law of the country is the well-known British conservatism.
Another feature is that there is no single act with the name “Constitution of Great Britain”. In this sense, it is unwritten. The written, i.e. fixed on paper, part of the British Constitution includes various legislative acts aimed at regulating constitutional issues.
The UK Constitution has three components:
- statute law;
- general (case-law) law ;
- constitutional agreements.
It is not possible to establish the exact number of sources of law that the UK Constitution includes, due to the lack of criteria by which one or another source should be attributed to one of the parts of the document.
The source of statutory law is acts adopted in accordance with the procedure by the parliament and authorized by the
head of state (statutes), as well as acts adopted by other public authorities on the basis of rights delegated by the highest legislative body (acts of delegated legislation). Most of the acts of a constitutional nature adopted at different times by the British Parliament. The structure of statutory law is composed of regulatory acts in force to this day:
- legal acts adopted several centuries ago (Magna Carta, Bill of Rights, etc.);
- laws adopted in the last century (Laws on Parliament, Law on the House of Commons, Laws on Ministers of the Crown, etc.).
Common law in the UK is created by the courts. Judges, guided by the principle of “strictly adhering to what was decided earlier” (stare decisis), apply precedents to the specific circumstances and facts of each court case. Thus, the sources of common law are judicial precedents - the norms and principles that have been formulated in specific cases. As a rule, they are decisions of the so-called high courts on constitutional issues.
Judicial precedents apply in the regulation of certain rights of citizens, as well as issues related to the privileges of the crown.
Constitutional agreements (they are also called constitutional customs, convention norms) are a part of political practice when political forces establish rules or enter into agreements that turn into a norm.
The legal sources of the British Fundamental Law of the country also include published opinions of authoritative scholars on legal issues, that is, doctrinal sources.