Constitutional and Administrative Law

In Chapter 2 we examined the sources of constitutional rules within the UK’s governance order. We established the importance of Acts of Parliament, which can be used to override other rules and have not, in the UK’s history as a state, been challenged by the courts. The theoretical relationship between constitutional sources, however, provides a distorted picture of the workings of the UK Constitution, and this section therefore explores the workings of the institutions of central government in the UK. This chapter concentrates upon the executive branch of government and how this branch has achieved a dominant position within the UK Constitution, both in spite of and because of parliamentary sovereignty. We begin by charting how the modern executive managed to accrue powers shed by a declining monarchy and proceed to analyse how the politicised elements of the executive branch were able to harness the party system and support of the civil service to exert control over Parliament.