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A British constitution makes no sense, power is delegated from the king not from the member states like in the US or Canada. The only way the UK could end up wi

A British constitution makes no sense, power is delegated from the king not from the member states like in the US or Canada. The only way the UK could end up with a constitution that's meaningful and not performative would be after a civil war.

catlikesshrimp 1y ago
Reboot doesn't mean improvement.
Y_Y 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin... It may not make sense to you, but they've been arguing constitutional law there for hundreds of years. Plenty of monarchies also have modern single-document constitutions, like Norway, Spain and Thailand.
- jkaplowitz 1y ago
  And a significant part of the Canadian constitution is now codified and entrenched in ways that no single one of the federal or provincial parliaments across Canada can freely amend, albeit not in a single document, even though Canada shares the same King as the UK. No reason the UK couldn’t do it - the UK Parliament itself even enacted the fundamental constitutional structure that Canada now has, at Canada’s request, and in the same act removed its own power to legislate for Canada going forward. (Canada had previously deferred its assumption of the power to amend its own constitution without asking the UK to do it until it figured out what replacement arrangement it wanted, which took half a century and the requesting Canadian government still very controversially did not win the assent of or even consult Quebec before proceeding.) With that said, there is an important structural difference: Canada is a true federal state rather than a unitary one like the UK which merely has some nonexclusive and constrained devolution to three subordinate parliaments within specific scopes. Every single bit of the Canadian constitution is indeed freely amendable by enough of the eleven Canadian federal or provincial parliaments working together. Certain specific parts can indeed be amended unilaterally by one parliament, but many parts need a much larger level of consensus, up to and including unanimity. This means that the Canadian situation is not really a counterexample to the claim that the UK parliament would necessarily retain full amendment rights if it did codify a constitution, since the UK parliament is most similar in authority not to the Canadian federal parliament but to all eleven federal or provincial Canadian parliaments combined, which collectively do retain full amendment flexibility if they can all agree as required. However, some provinces refuse to ratify amendments without a referendum, and the country has a lot of trauma from past failed attempts to make major constitutional amendments such that they mostly don’t attempt them any more, so the eleven parliaments have de facto lost some of their collective parliamentary supremacy even if they have not lost it de jure.
- mathiaspoint 1y ago
  The Thai monarch actually has power though which makes the constitution meaningful. A constitution between two parties where one has no power is meaningless.
fmbb 1y ago
It is the British monarchy that is performative, not their democracy.
- MattPalmer1086 1y ago
  Ironically, while I am absolutely not a monarchist, it provides a kind of stability to British democracy, because it mostly transcends party politics, unlike other presidential systems. Indeed, the founding fathers of the US identified political parties as a threat to their republic.
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    And yet, there were defacto political parties in the delightfully misnamed federalist and anti-federalists. It was this divide that led to the first political parties.
    - MattPalmer1086 1y ago
      Oh, they cannot be avoided really, except by a system where party allegiance cannot influence the choice (like hereditary power).
      - mathiaspoint 1y ago
        Arrow's theorem would cause them to emerge even then.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > this divide that led to the first political parties Maybe in Britain. Parties were definitely a thing going back to Roman politics.
      - zdragnar 1y ago
        No, I meant in the newborn US. The OP founding fathers reference is Hamilton and the Federalists who feared the harms of political parties, but ultimately couldn't reconcile with the anti-federalists who ultimately formed the democratic-republican party.
speerer 1y ago
We already have a constitution. It just isn't a written constitution: > The United Kingdom constitution is composed of the laws and rules that create the institutions of the state, regulate the relationships between those institutions, or regulate the relationship between the state and the individual. These laws and rules are not codified in a single, written document. Source for that quote is parliamentary: https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-committees/political-and-constitutional-reform/The-UK-Constitution.pdf https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-com... - a publication from 2015 which considered and proposed a written constitution. But other definitions include unwritten things like customs and conventions. For example: > It is often noted that the UK does not have a ‘written’ or ‘codified’ constitution. It is true that most countries have a document with special legal status that contains some of the key features of their constitution. This text is usually upheld by the courts and cannot be changed except through an especially demanding process. The UK, however, does not possess a single constitutional document of this nature. Nevertheless, it does have a constitution. The UK’s constitution is spread across a number of places. This dispersal can make it more difficult to identify and understand. It is found in places including some specific Acts of Parliament; particular understandings of how the system should operate (known as constitutional conventions); and various decisions made by judges that help determine how the system works. https://consoc.org.uk/the-constitution-explained/the-uk-constitution/#:~:text=It%20is%20often%20noted%20that,difficult%20to%20identify%20and%20understand. https://consoc.org.uk/the-constitution-explained/the-uk-cons...
- mathiaspoint 1y ago
  Right of course every state has a "constitution" but the contemporary connotation of the word means an enforceable law that meaningfully constrains the state's power.
  - wasabi991011 1y ago
    The Bill of Rights or the Habeus Corpus meaningfully constrains the states power, and are cited in court proceedings. Just because it isn't 1 document like in the US, it doesn't mean it's not a constitution. I think what you mean by "contemporary connotation" with "American connotation".
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
pyuser583 1y ago
You mean like a civil war between the Crown and Parliament?

catlikesshrimp 1y ago

Reboot doesn't mean improvement.

Y_Y 1y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin... It may not make sense to you, but they've been arguing constitutional law there for hundreds of years. Plenty of monarchies also have modern single-document constitutions, like Norway, Spain and Thailand.

jkaplowitz 1y ago
And a significant part of the Canadian constitution is now codified and entrenched in ways that no single one of the federal or provincial parliaments across Canada can freely amend, albeit not in a single document, even though Canada shares the same King as the UK. No reason the UK couldn’t do it - the UK Parliament itself even enacted the fundamental constitutional structure that Canada now has, at Canada’s request, and in the same act removed its own power to legislate for Canada going forward. (Canada had previously deferred its assumption of the power to amend its own constitution without asking the UK to do it until it figured out what replacement arrangement it wanted, which took half a century and the requesting Canadian government still very controversially did not win the assent of or even consult Quebec before proceeding.) With that said, there is an important structural difference: Canada is a true federal state rather than a unitary one like the UK which merely has some nonexclusive and constrained devolution to three subordinate parliaments within specific scopes. Every single bit of the Canadian constitution is indeed freely amendable by enough of the eleven Canadian federal or provincial parliaments working together. Certain specific parts can indeed be amended unilaterally by one parliament, but many parts need a much larger level of consensus, up to and including unanimity. This means that the Canadian situation is not really a counterexample to the claim that the UK parliament would necessarily retain full amendment rights if it did codify a constitution, since the UK parliament is most similar in authority not to the Canadian federal parliament but to all eleven federal or provincial Canadian parliaments combined, which collectively do retain full amendment flexibility if they can all agree as required. However, some provinces refuse to ratify amendments without a referendum, and the country has a lot of trauma from past failed attempts to make major constitutional amendments such that they mostly don’t attempt them any more, so the eleven parliaments have de facto lost some of their collective parliamentary supremacy even if they have not lost it de jure.
mathiaspoint 1y ago
The Thai monarch actually has power though which makes the constitution meaningful. A constitution between two parties where one has no power is meaningless.

fmbb 1y ago

It is the British monarchy that is performative, not their democracy.

MattPalmer1086 1y ago
Ironically, while I am absolutely not a monarchist, it provides a kind of stability to British democracy, because it mostly transcends party politics, unlike other presidential systems. Indeed, the founding fathers of the US identified political parties as a threat to their republic.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  And yet, there were defacto political parties in the delightfully misnamed federalist and anti-federalists. It was this divide that led to the first political parties.
  - MattPalmer1086 1y ago
    Oh, they cannot be avoided really, except by a system where party allegiance cannot influence the choice (like hereditary power).
    - mathiaspoint 1y ago
      Arrow's theorem would cause them to emerge even then.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > this divide that led to the first political parties Maybe in Britain. Parties were definitely a thing going back to Roman politics.
    - zdragnar 1y ago
      No, I meant in the newborn US. The OP founding fathers reference is Hamilton and the Federalists who feared the harms of political parties, but ultimately couldn't reconcile with the anti-federalists who ultimately formed the democratic-republican party.

speerer 1y ago

We already have a constitution. It just isn't a written constitution: > The United Kingdom constitution is composed of the laws and rules that create the institutions of the state, regulate the relationships between those institutions, or regulate the relationship between the state and the individual. These laws and rules are not codified in a single, written document. Source for that quote is parliamentary: https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-committees/political-and-constitutional-reform/The-UK-Constitution.pdf https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-com... - a publication from 2015 which considered and proposed a written constitution. But other definitions include unwritten things like customs and conventions. For example: > It is often noted that the UK does not have a ‘written’ or ‘codified’ constitution. It is true that most countries have a document with special legal status that contains some of the key features of their constitution. This text is usually upheld by the courts and cannot be changed except through an especially demanding process. The UK, however, does not possess a single constitutional document of this nature. Nevertheless, it does have a constitution. The UK’s constitution is spread across a number of places. This dispersal can make it more difficult to identify and understand. It is found in places including some specific Acts of Parliament; particular understandings of how the system should operate (known as constitutional conventions); and various decisions made by judges that help determine how the system works. https://consoc.org.uk/the-constitution-explained/the-uk-constitution/#:~:text=It%20is%20often%20noted%20that,difficult%20to%20identify%20and%20understand. https://consoc.org.uk/the-constitution-explained/the-uk-cons...

mathiaspoint 1y ago
Right of course every state has a "constitution" but the contemporary connotation of the word means an enforceable law that meaningfully constrains the state's power.
- wasabi991011 1y ago
  The Bill of Rights or the Habeus Corpus meaningfully constrains the states power, and are cited in court proceedings. Just because it isn't 1 document like in the US, it doesn't mean it's not a constitution. I think what you mean by "contemporary connotation" with "American connotation".

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

pyuser583 1y ago

You mean like a civil war between the Crown and Parliament?