The British constitution, law reform and the parliamentary legislative process

Most of this chapter will concern itself with the way in which law is made by Parliament. Parliament creates written law referred to as legislation or statute law. Legislation or statutes passed by Parliament take the form of Acts of Parliament. You can see from the illustration below, and from Chapters 1-5, that there are four main sources of law in the English legal system, of which Acts of Parliament are seen as the dominant source:

In order to understand Parliament’s law-making role, it is first necessary to consider the place of Parliament within the British constitution and to describe its relationship with the other constitutional powers.