Constitutional Reform Act 2005 Essay

The United Kingdom’s constitution, because it is unwritten, relies mainly on two constitutional principles: parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law. There is however what appears to be a “tension” between those two. On the one hand, orthodox legal theory has always said that courts in the United Kingdom are subordinate to the Parliament, which is said to be sovereign. As illustrated by Dicey’s quote, “Parliament has, under the English constitution, the right to make or unmake any law whatever; and, further, no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament” . As a consequence, courts have no power whatsoever to review and declare statutes passed by the Parliament invalid. They simply have to apply them. There is however a “new view” on parliament supremacy held notably by Lord Jennings, Marshall and Heuston according to which it is rather the courts who are “the ultimate arbiters of what the law is in a given society” , and not the Parliament. On the

The changes wrought by the creation of the former were largely “cosmetic” and destined to overturn the suspicious and distrustful public opinion, enhance the credibility of the judicial system in the eyes of citizens and "carry in [their] eyes a badge of independence and neutrality” . This new court was above all meant to be “a potent symbol of the allegiance of [the UK] to the rule of law". But if truth be told, in spite of a large scale impression of a “fusion of powers”, especially after Pinochet No. 1, there was no real endangerment of judiciary independence. Indeed, “it need not be the case that this independence has, in fact, been compromised; however, the perception of inadequate separation