Constitutional Conventions (in more detail) Flashcards
- What is a Brief Definition of Constitutional Conventions?
“Rules of political practice, which are regarded as binding, by those to whom they apply, but which are not laws because they are not enforced by the courts…”
- Owen Hood Phillips & Jackson, Constitutional & Administrative Law
Rules: just because you cannot go to court to enforce these laws does not mean that they are not rules.
Regarded as binding: conventions are not binding on all citizens, they are only binding on people who operate on the civil machine
they are not enforced by the courts: ex royal assent, a bill is passed on but the king does not agree to the signing, the judges would ignore this as it is not a valid statute, government might not agree and say that the king has breached his constitutional rights.
Gov may introduce a short bill saying it will abolish royal assent, however this would go to the king and so he would reject this again this may lead to a political crisis, good example about how the monarch must obey the law even though they have a perfect right to not give consent to a bill.
Why are
Conventions are rules – as we have seen above just because they are not rules enforced by the courts does not mean they cease to be rules. People obey rules for a variety of reasons.
They are regarded as binding by those to whom they apply – firstly this implies those who follow them seem to have a say in whether they are bound by them. We would not say the same for example about the criminal law – whether we regard ourselves as bound by the criminal law is irrelevant to our liability in court.
However, conventions are not legal rules in this sense. This part of the definition indicates also that conventions are not of universal application like the criminal law; they apply instead to a small set of individuals – those who operate the system of Government i.e. Parliament, Ministers, Judges, the Monarch.
They are not laws and are not enforced by the courts (as discussed above) but there may be very real and drastic consequences for breaching them.
This resulted in what is known as a Hung Parliament. This is when no single party is able to command a majority of votes in the House of Commons. As there are currently 650 seats this would require 326 seats to have a majority.
Unlike Article II Section 1 of the US Constitution and the 12th Amendment (which sets out in great detail in written law how the US President is elected and chosen) we have very little law to govern the issue of how a Government is chosen and a Prime Minister is appointed.
There is some law which has an indirect bearing on the question.
For example, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 tells us there must be a General Election every 5 years and when these are scheduled to take place.
The Representation of the People Acts tell us who legally may vote in the General Elections. That the Queen has the right to appoint the Prime Minister is also a legal rule as its source is the royal prerogative (which is a part of the common law).
