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The Constitution Of The United Kingdom

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The present constitution in the United Kingdom is unwritten. There has been much dispute as to whether or not a written constitution, as implemented by many other countries such as France and the United States of America, should also be adopted by the United Kingdom. The working mechanism of government is conditioned by a system of procedures, which regulate on one level of the principle organs of the state, whilst others govern the conduct of official business. Amid these usages are ones that have the position of a convention. Lord Wilson describes these conventions as ‘...political principles which regulate relations between the different parts of our constitution and the exercise of power but which do not have legal force.’ Since they do not have legal force, certain questions emerge, such as whether constitutional conventions should be codified, and whether their unclassified nature would permit such alteration. This essay will consider the arguments of the codification of constitutional conventions if a written constitution were to be implemented by the United Kingdom. Reasons proposing and opposing codifying conventions will be considered, specifically focusing on these foremost resolutions: legally enforcing codified conventions, allowing codified conventions to be regarded as non-legal rules, specify a selection of conventions to be codified, or quite simply leave them as they are, uncodified. This analysis will outline the varied views on codifying conventions

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