Talk:United Kingdom constitutional law

Expanding
It's odd that there isn't yet a decent page on UK constitutional law, so I hope this can be a welcome addition.  Wik idea  15:02, 29 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the lack of an article on UK Constitution is due the fact that there really is no constitution in UK, at least if constitution means the same as in the phrase, "The Constitution of the USA." (~I think that in the UK everywhere that an American swears an oath to uphold the Constitution, the Brit swears to the Queen, which fact explains the thesis of at least one history professor that the UK Constitution is the Queen. It remains to be seen if some day the new UK Supreme Court will invalidate a traditional act of the Queen (out of her prerogative) by declaring that the queen didn't know what she was doing because she got bad advice. (PeacePeace (talk) 17:19, 12 September 2019 (UTC))


 * I realise that this is a delayed response, but I wanted to point out, in case any future reader becomes confused, that the UK does have a constitution, it's just uncodified. In R (Miller) v Prime Minister (2020), the case which you seem to preclude to but that hadn't yet been decided at the time of your comment, the Supreme Court said: "[a]lthough the United Kingdom does not have a single document entitled “The Constitution”, it nevertheless possesses a Constitution, established over the course of our history by common law, statutes, conventions and practice." FollowTheTortoise (talk) 13:37, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Not a real democracy, but a Republic
Using the term "democracy" for a system where the people elect representatives who make the laws, confuses democracy with republic, even though it has become popular to speak of republic that way. The system like ancient Athens where the citizens voted the laws is historically called "democracy." Calling a republic a democracy tends to blind people into thinking that they themselves are making the laws, when they are not. Thus I have boldly removed democracy from the article where republic is the better term. Let us use the best and most accurate terms. (PeacePeace (talk) 17:14, 12 September 2019 (UTC))

Article says (without any sources):


 * "Courts interpret statutes, progress the common law and principles of equity, and can control the discretion of the executive. UK courts are usually thought to have no power to declare an Act of Parliament unconstitutional. The executive is headed by the Prime Minister, who must command a majority in the House of Commons.

These claims need sources. To what extent can courts control the Executive? What if PM acts through the Queen & her prerogative? The last sentence has proven to be untrue. Boris Johnson has no majority in HoC. And in fact his opponents may wish to keep him designated PM, while they run Parliament in defiance of the PM, so that no general election takes place. An early election cannot now be called by PM going to the Queen and telling her he as lost his majority & cannot govern. Now the early election vote requires 2/3 of Parliament. I think these statements can be improved. (PeacePeace (talk) 17:33, 12 September 2019 (UTC))

Is this not more a confusion between "direct democracy" and "representative democracy". The UK is a representative democracy and so the term "democracy" is surely appropriate throughout? (see Wikipedia article on Democracy) Also, is it not incorrect to use the term "republic" or "republican", as a republic does not have a hereditary monarch as head of state? (see Wikipedia article on Republic). I'm a newcomer - be kind! 90.246.90.100 (talk) 09:50, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

State of this article
This article is a mess. Not because it doesn't contain exhaustive detail, but because past contributors to it have had a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose and point of a reference. Consequently way too much in it is not properly sourced.

By citing sources for Wikipedia content, you enable users to verify that the information given is supported by reliable sources, thus improving the credibility of Wikipedia while showing that the content is not original research. A cite is fundamentally a direction to the reader to where they may verify the content of the article in a reliable source.

The purpose of a reference is not to;
 * provide footnotes, asides and further details.
 * list and combine sources to construct original synthesis that supports what the article says.
 * link to other Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia cannot act as a source for itself and is not a reliable source.
 * provide "see also"s of other related information that does not explicitly discuss or relate to the article subject.
 * provide examples that, in the writer's opinion, apply to the article content.

I've removed quite a few of the above, but a lot of it that is suspect involves specialist knowledge I don't have. -- Escape Orbit (Talk) 15:37, 12 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Please do suggest any more specific changes here - I'm more than happy to fix things that sound inaccurate, and forgive me if I wrote the first draft too quickly.  Wik idea  16:56, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree that this page could do with some work. I'm really interested in this area, but find the article difficult to follow in parts. I have a feeling that it might be too long. FollowTheTortoise (talk) 13:18, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree on the general state of this article, more substantively, I think the delineation between it and Constitution of the United Kingdom (another long and poorly cited article) are not sufficiently clear. There also exists United Kingdom administrative law which covers much the same ground. I'll work on making changes, especially to citations and update here MKT92 (talk) 16:42, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Old comment, but I don't really agree with the list above, and think it's sort of making up strict rules that don't really exist. Synthesising multiple sources is what wikipedia does, further details are relevant if they are WP:DUE, linking (but not citing) other wikipedia articles is encouraged (WP:BTW), see also's can be quite valuable for the reader. The version of this I agree with is that a varity of editorial decisions can be write content that is not WP:NPOV, can not be WP:DUE or can be used for WP:OR... it's just I don't think a list of rules that aren't really true is going to catch this. WP:NOTESSAY might apply - the writing style and expectations of wikipedia are more aggressively "pure summary" and less "original thought" than the style that is common in history texts (though it's to be noted since most original thoughts are not so much "original" as obvious and expository, other authors will have often both thought and written idential thoughts suitable for citation). Talpedia (talk) 22:52, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Proposed to merge
I propose to merge Constitution of the United Kingdom into this. Kaihsu (talk) 10:24, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Constitutional conventions are not law:        . James500 (talk) 10:36, 6 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose - the UK Constitution/British Constitution and the principles or law behind it are fundamentally different. Atomix330 (talk) 03:09, 8 February 2023 (UTC)


 * To be fair, Dicey (and others) doesn't say "conventions aren't law". They are certainly dealt with in every law book, and to understand constitutional law, you'd understand conventions. But they're not rules that are enforced in courts. The non-enforcement of conventions is itself part of the law - if that makes sense? I'm not sure how we can separate the constitution and the law - the constitution means all the rules of the body politic. There's a lot of writing on the "political constitution".  Wik idea  12:26, 3 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose these are separate topics. By way of comparison - there are separate articles on the Constitution of the United States and Constitutional law of the United States. Whizz40 (talk) 06:33, 19 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose as they are the constitution and constitutional law are different topics DimensionalFusion (talk) 21:07, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Human rights act of sixteen eighty eight
Human rights act of sixteen eighty eight 2.30.163.229 (talk) 12:26, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

"Uk public" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Uk_public&redirect=no Uk public] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Utopes (talk / cont) 05:53, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Content fork
This article appears to me as a clone of the older Constitution of the United Kingdom article, which dwarfs its |United_Kingdom_constitutional_law page views. The arguments in the above proposed merge discussion seem weak to me. I understand the difference between the Constitution of the United States, which is a formal document, with formal processes for its amendment, and Constitutional law of the United States, the body of law governing the interpretation and implementation of the United States Constitution. The UK has no equivalent formal document, so Constitutional law of the United Kingdom is simply the body of law governing the interpretation and implementation of United Kingdom constitutional law. These seem like circular topics. Or, rather one topic which is conventionally called Constitution of the United Kingdom because "constitution" is more concise than "constitutional law". A country with an uncodified constitution, e.g., the UK, is simply governed by "constitutional law", which is more concisely simply called "the constitution". If these are fundamentally different and separate topics, then someone please clearly and succinctly explain to me what the difference is, because the difference is clear as mud to me! More later, wbm1058 (talk) 14:12, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
 * After finishing a series of edits to United Kingdom constitutional law at 06:11, 12 August 2019, an editor copy-pasted §Regional government into Constitution of the United Kingdom. (Compare pages) (relevant edit history). Essentially this editor treated United Kingdom constitutional law as a sandbox page for Constitution of the United Kingdom. This belies the idea that there is any essential conceptual difference between "constitutional law" and "the constitution", as applied to regional government.
 * I'm imagining that copy-pasting was also done elsewhere in these articles. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:55, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

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