To evaluate the wholeperspective whether the British Separation of Powers is more adaptableto societal changes compared to the United States, it may insightful to observefactors that counteract this agreement. Although the nature of the UnitedKingdom’s ‘Unwritten Constitution’ is fairly flexible it does come with somedisadvantages which include those of no formal protection of rights,constitutional crises and constitutional rights of a governments or PrimeMinister’s powers being abused.1 With the separation ofpowers, it also does not provide a firm position of roles for the threeBranches allowing room for abuse of power and overall a far more complexunderstanding is needed. The United Kingdom’s Uncodified Constitution does holdits limitations in that due to the characteristics of this Constitution thereis a reliance on outside influence as for example the European Court of HumanRights.
This agreement becomes evident to this investigation through the HumanRights Act of 1998, although an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom wasdesigned to incorporate European Conventions on Human Rights into UK law.2 Through this example iscan be argued that this can not only highlight the downside of Britain’sconstitution but the impact on British sovereignty and the lack of ability forthere to be no adaptability to modern societal changes of human rights. An additionalissue would be the abuse and attack of sovereignty of the electorate from thegovernments or Prime Minister’s ability to alter an ‘Unwritten Constitution’ byjust passing an Act of Parliament with their majority in the House ofParliament. This can be seen with the controversial decision made by then PrimeMinister Tony Blair and the passing of multiple laws but largely amounts of statutoryinstrument.3Although many of these laws can be argued to be a response to the demands of achanging society it sheds a light on the sheer amount of legislation that wasbeing put through and that allowed less debate time in Parliament so thereforeless scrutiny.4This is essential for keeping the checks and balances in the Separation ofPowers showing that power on the Executive Branch here can be interpreted tohave been abused even though the intention was to keep up with the demands of societalchanges. 1 Teacher, Law.
November 2013, The Advantage Of The UkConstitution Constitutional Law Essay,https://www.lawteacher.net/free-law-essays/constitutional-law/the-advantage-of-the-uk-constitution-constitutional-law-essay.php?cref=12 Human Rights Act 1998, 1998 c42 (UK) 3 Press Association, Blair decade sees jump in number of newlaws, study finds, The Guardian, Article Published: 4th June 2007(UK), https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/jun/04/houseofcommons.uk 4 ibid
