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The Need for a Constitution in the United Kingdom*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2016
Extract
I was not surprised when, from several alternative subjects, you chose, as the title of my Lecture, the need for a Constitution in Britain. Those of us without a written constitution are indeed, a select club—New Zealand, Israel, the United Kingdom.
I will start with a quotation from Lord Salmon. In a recent lecture, he said:
In this country [U.K.] we have an unwritten constitution. I have always regarded this as a blessing and never agreed with the theoretical objections to it. It is superbly flexible and above all it has stood the test of time. It works—and works admirably. But I am beginning to wonder whether it might not be wise to evolve, not an elaborate written constitution but perhaps the equivalent of a modern Bill of Rights. A statute which should lay down our basic freedoms, provide for their preservation and enact that it could not be repealed save by, say, a 75% majority of both Houses of Parliament.
One can recognize in this passage the views of an eminent common lawyer, believing in the strength and potentialities of the common law as a flexible instrument, in, of course, the right hands: of one who believes deeply in human freedom, and who is concerned about the threat to it: who desires an explicit definition of the basic liberties and who believes that these can be protected by a sufficiently strong, entrenched, legal system. In this he undoubtedly reflects the views of many people, probably of the majority of ordinary men.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1979
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* Lionel Cohen Lecture delivered on 19 May 1979 at the Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.