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Unit 6: Socio-Economic Bases and Salient Features of the Constitutions

Minister, speaks of the highly flexible character of the English constitution. Not being set out or Notes
declared in any sacrosanct document, nor hedged in by some special process of amendment,
the British constitution “can be changed or modified in any or every particular way by the
ordinary process of legislation. It can be reformed in any part by an ordinary act of Parliament
assented to in the ordinary way.”
National character plays its own part in determining the nature of a constitution. A constitution
may be flexible or rigid not only because of the process of its amendment, or the breadth of its
written provisions, much also depends upon the character of the people. In other words, it
means that changes in the constitution depend upon the temperament of the people. Thus, the
flexibility of the English constitution is qualified by the conservative character of the people.
Since the people are the lovers of tradition, no sudden or radical change has so far occurred in
the English constitution. Leaving aside the peculiar events of the mid-seventeenth century,
nothing very astonishing has occurred in the direction of, for example, reforming the House of
Lords. No Parliament and no Prime Minister can dare take a step that might create mass
indignation. It is for this reason that no change in the constitutional sphere as occurred without
a very thorough airing of the matter in public many years before it was actually attempted and
above all without seeking a mandate in an election to the proposal.” As Munro says, the
legislators “come from the people; they think and feel as the people do; they are saturated with
the same hopes and fears; they are creatures of the same habits and when habits solidify into
traditions or usages, they are stronger than laws, stronger than the provisions of the written
constitutions.”
5. Concentration and Diffusion of Powers
One of the peculiar features of the English constitution should be discovered in the unique
manner in which powers have been concentrated in the executive and legislative organs of the
government and, at the same time, these have been separated, rather, diffused, in the midst of
what Bagehot calls ‘supposed checks and balances’ of the constitutional system of Britain. It
should, however, be pointed out here that the meaning of the term ‘separation of powers’ does
not have the same implications here that were given by Montesquieu and what we find in the
American constitutional system. What should be taken note of is that the separation of powers
does prevail in Britain to the extent and in a manner that is essential for the preservation of the
essential liberties of the people. In the place of the rigid separation of powers, into three
compartments, the British have preferred to have many divisions each providing checks on the
other.
The concentration of powers is traceable in the fact that the monarch is the head of the state
whose prerogatives, though formal, cover all the three spheres of government. The Prime
Minister and the Cabinet constitute the executive part, but they have usurped the powers of the
Parliament. Moreover, all members of the Cabinet are the members of the Parliament and
thereby they perform functions originally vested in the national legislature. The Lord Chancellor
is the peculiar authority whose range of functions defies the principle of separation of powers
as he is in the legislature by virtue of being the presiding officer of the House of Lords; he is in
the executive because of being a member of the Cabinet; finally, he is in the judiciary on
account of serving as Lord Chief Justice while the House of Lords sits as the highest court of
the country in civil and criminal matters for England and Northern Ireland and for Scotland in
civil matters. In addition, he has executive duties connected with the courts, such as confirming
the appointment of justices, clerks, sending out circulars on sentences and being responsible
for prisons, the probation service, and the release of persons from Broadmoor and similar
institutions. What engages our attention at this stage is that even judiciary is not a separate
part of the English government in a manner we find in the United States — the land of the
separation of powers.
The essential feature of the English constitution is, therefore, the concentration of powers and
since most of the powers have been usurped by the Cabinet, it has become the single-most
important piece of mechanism in the political structure of England. In terms of law, sovereignty
lies with the Parliament; in terms of politics, the powers of the Parliament have been usurped

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