A Peculiar Constitutional History
England and the United Kingdom (which, in addition to England, includes Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), boast one of the most peculiar and interesting “constitutional” histories of all the western countries.
At the center of these histories stand two specific institutions: the Crown and Parliament.“Fog in Channel, Continent Cut Off”. With this phrase the English sum up a disposition, a special spirit that differs profoundly from the rest of Europe. Firstly, for geographical reasons, as it is located on the island of Great Britain, invaded in 1066 by the Norman King William the Conqueror. After defeating King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings, William rose to the British throne.[504] The Normans, as their name indicates, were men from the north (Norsemen) who in the ninth century had navigated Europe’s largest rivers, attacking the towns located along them, aided by ships which benefitted from their minimal draft. Among these towns was Paris, which was sacked several times. In 911, the Frankish king Charles the Simple, weary of their raids, made a pact with the Norman leader Rollo at Cheptel sur Epte through, which in exchange for peace, he turned the city of Rouen over to him, along with the provinces as far west as Brittany (Crouch 2007, 4). Settled on France’s northwestern coast, the Normans invaded the island of Great Britain in 1066 (incidentally, the last time the island would be successfully invaded: Philip II’s Armada, Napoleon and Hitler would all fail to match this feat).
The history of English public law is one of the West’s most interesting. Many “Continental” legal scholars contend that the UK has no constitution, but in this they err. While it does not have, of course, a written constitution (Jenkins 2003), the British enjoy Europe’s oldest series of political customs and habits, a body of customs and usages called the “conventions” of the Constitution (Chrimes 1970, 7), a legacy which makes their political system extremely stable.[505] And the most imitated.
The British were the principal architects of Parliamentary government, in which the executive is elected—and controlled—by the legislature (Wintertorn 1976, 591-617). This model of representative government has prevailed in many western countries, beginning with most European democracies, and has become a reference in western constitutional history (Irvine of Lairg 2003, 227-250).We have already seen how classical absolutism evolved towards an “enlightened” approach, adapting in response to the circumstances of eighteenth-century Europe. The absolute monarchs strove to be more effective, but while respecting the sacred principle that government should be exercised by one person. Their reformist policies surely transformed the realities of their kingdoms, but they also emphasized the authoritarianism of the king, thereby exacerbating his isolation from his subjects. The rigidity and intransigence of the absolutist regimes was gradually overcome in England as the principle of the British Parliament’s control of the monarchy was reestablished in the seventeenth century. Thus did British “constitutional” practice progressively move towards “assembly-based government” during the eighteenth century, developing into a “parliamentary system” in the nineteenth century.[506]
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