Fundamental principles.
The UK has a common law legal system. It is very difficult to give a simple definition of the legal system in the UK, but you may find it helps to think of it as the system that covers how all civil and criminal laws are made, used and enforced.
A fundamental part of any legal system is its constitution. A constitution is the basic law of the state providing the rules by which the state is governed and setting out the rights and responsibilities of the state and its citizens. For example, in the UK, adults aged over
18 who have the right to vote in a general election have a constitutional responsibility to vote. Constitutions are important because they essentially set out the broad principles concerning who can make law. They also allocate the balance of power between the main institutions of the state – the government, Parliament and the judiciary – and provide the framework for the use of these institutions' powers.
A constitution may also indicate the basic principles by which a country should expect to be governed, for example, that people should not be punished unless they have broken the law; or that certain rights and freedoms, such as freedom of speech, thought and conscience, are guaranteed. In the UK, we have an unwritten constitution that comes from many sources. This is unusual as every other Western democracy has a written constitution. In many cases, such as for France, Germany and the United States of
America, the document containing the constitution was written after a major change, such as a revolution or war.
The sources of the UK's unwritten constitution include Acts of the UK Parliament, judicial decisions and conventions. Conventions are not laws but are long established traditions which are followed because they have just simply become recognised as the right way to do things. One example of a convention is that judges do not undertake activities associated with political parties.
Underlying