Questions On Parliamentary Sovereignty Of The Uk Parliament Essay

'The House of Lords is now more effective than the House of Commons in checking government power'. Discuss

“Some lawyers have been attracted to the argument that the union legislation placed constraints on the power of the UK Parliament to legislate, and that the UK Parliament might be unable to alter at least its most important terms. While there are powerful arguments against this view, - it continues to have its supporters. It famously received some judicial support from Lord Cooper in MacCormick v Lord Advocate, and has been referred to in several subsequent cases. However, there has been no case in which a Scottish court has questioned the validity of an Act of Parliament on these grounds. Indeed, whether an Act of the UK Parliament is compatible with the union legislation was treated as, in principle, a non-justiciable issue in MacCormick. However, supporters of the argument have taken comfort from the fact that in MacCormick, Gibson and Pringle Scottish judges reserved their opinion on what would be the case if legislation purported to amend 'fundamental provisions', for example, by abolishing the Church of Scotland or the Court of Session, or by replacing the Scottish system of private law with English

Before evaluating whether or not Parliament is sovereign, it’s important to define what sovereignty means. Sovereignty can be split into two; political and legal. Legal sovereignty is the ultimate power to make laws which will be enforced within the state. Members of Parliament and the Prime Minister have ultimate legal power because they propose and enforce legislation. Citizens have no legal sovereignty because they don’t play a role in the legislative function even though pressure group activity may influence decisions. Political sovereignty is where real political power lies, and depending on the situation political sovereignty doesn’t always lie within Parliament. Critics have argued that due to recent changes, Parliament is no longer

Parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law are both concepts that are key to shaping the British constitution, however there is ambiguity as to which concept is the heart of the UK’s constitutional arrangement in the recent years.

A secondary way in which parliamentary sovereignty in the UK can be seen to be moving is though the introduction of devolution which is challenging the UK parliament’s sovereignty. The UK is a unitary state, so only one body can in theory

‘Parliamentary sovereignty is a constitutional relic. It has been rendered obsolete, in particular, by the supremacy of EU law and the UK’s statutory recognition of human rights. We should no longer talk about this irrelevant doctrine.’

A parliamentary government is a democratic form of government which operates on a party system. It is the most popular and widely adopted form of democracy. A state that operates on a parliamentary system is run by two executives, firstly the head of state who is either a monarch or president who then appoints a prime minister as the head of government. A parliament can be run by either a single majority political party or as a coalition government in which more than one party collaborate to form the government. In this essay I will be assessing the key strengths and weaknesses associated with a parliamentary government. In doing so I will conclude that whilst a parliamentary government has weaknesses its strengths outweigh these and therefore it is the superior form of democratic government.

For many years it has been argued that parliamentary sovereignty has, and still is, being eroded. As said by AV Dicey, the word ‘sovereignty’ is used to describe the idea of “the power of law making unrestricted by any legal limit”. Parliamentary sovereignty is a principle of the UK constitution, stating that Parliament is the supreme legal authority in the UK, able to create and remove any law. This power over-rules courts and all other jurisdiction. It also cannot be entrenched; this is where all laws passed by the party in government can be changed by future parliaments. In recent years sovereignty of parliament has been a

The centrepiece of Labour 's programme of constitutional reform was undoubtedly devolution. This was achieved with remarkably few problems. There now seems no likelihood that the new arrangements could be reversed, even by a Conservative administration. The election on 6 May 1999 of a Parliament in Scotland, with extensive powers of primary legislation as well as tax-raising, and an Assembly in Wales, with powers of secondary legislation only, will have a profound impact on governance within the UK. In

It is also important to consider the effect that the principle of subsidiarity can have on the central European Parliament, as it is required to only carry out “those tasks which cannot be performed effectivity at a more immediate or local level” . This importance of decisions being taken as closely as possible to the citizen, can be monitored through constant checks being made to verify that the higher EU level is legitimately required. After members of the European Parliament were granted the power to approve or reject legislation in 1979 , it was then established in Article 5 of the Treaty of Lisbon that member states must also be given the ability to repeal an adoptive legislative act. This is particularly regarding one of shared areas, to certify “the efficiency and democratic legitimacy of the union and to improve the coherence of its action” . There is also much concern that unless EU voters can “become more credible and legitimate in the eyes of the voter” , particular areas of the Union may begin to tangle.

“Parliamentary sovereignty is no longer, if it ever was, absolute” (Lord Hope). Discuss with reference to at least three challenges to the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. Parliamentary sovereignty is the concept that Parliament has the power to repeal, amend or create any law it wishes and therefore no body in the UK can challenge its legal validity. There are many people who would argue that this is a key principle to the UK Constitution, on the other hand, there are those who strongly believe that this idea is one of the past, and that the idea of the UK Parliament being sovereign is false. One of these people is Lord Hope, who said “Parliamentary sovereignty is no longer, if it ever was, absolute”. During the last 50 years there have been a variety of developments that have proved to be a challenge for the legitimacy of parliamentary sovereignty, and the ones which will be examined in this essay are: the devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament; The United Kingdom’s entry into the European Union in 1973; and finally the power of judicial review. Starting with the devolution of powers, these challenges will all be evaluated when discussing whether or not the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty applies to the United Kingdom. Westminster’s sovereignty has been gradually diminishing over time as varying amounts of power have been devolved to Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. In this essay, the devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament will be

This paper will assess the claim that supremacy of EU law is still an evolving and debatable concept. To do this, I have divided this paper into four sections. The first section will discuss the establishment of supremacy in EU law through ECJ case law. The second section will explore the vibrant debate surrounding constitutional pluralism that has arisen since the early 1990s. The third section will examine the debate and impact of the codification of primacy in the early 2000s. The fourth section will examine the extent to which the principle of sovereignty has been accepted in three EU Member States, namely, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Poland.

Some judges in their obiter dicta have declared their inclination to disregard the Parliament’s legislative objectives, and therefore limit parliamentary sovereignty if the rule of law is vulnerable or if the circumstances demand “a principle established on a different hypothesis of constitutionalism” . They have also suggested that, while the British Constitution is dominated by parliamentary sovereignty, “The rule of law enforced by the courts is the ultimate controlling factor on which our constitution is based” . This represents a possibility of stretching the dominance of the rule of law in constitutional law so that it becomes more powerful than parliamentary sovereignty in the British Constitution .

In order to look at whether the institutional changes from the Lisbon Treaty have been able to reduce the democratic pressure and if after these changes does the European Union still lack democratic accountability. We shall look at all the main insinuations and discuss the changes that were brought in and how these may have or haven’t contributed to make the union free form its democratic pressure.

The European Union has grown from its humble beginnings of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) into a complex system of governance within Europe and it has become a key figure internationally. The issue is whether the European Union (EU) has in this time grown into a supranational form of governance with the establishment of treaties, or have the nation states stayed in control. I am going to argue that the EU’s supranational qualities are the allocation of shared common interests among the nation states that compose it. It has been shown by history that the power ultimately lies in the member state as evidenced by the need for unanimity in passing the treaties that mandate the EU and earlier conceptions of it have resulted in the