ABSTRACT
The basis for our discussion this week is found in the evolution of parliamentary government, albeit in a variety of forms, in the 54 very diverse Commonwealth countries scattered throughout the world. This version of parliamentary government was derived from the United Kingdom but the development of the export model has involved a number of familiar paradoxes. 1 Throughout the Commonwealth, parliamentary government is established
by formal constitutions which provide detailed frameworks for the conduct of government. Yet the United Kingdom itself has never had a written constitution or a supreme law and the actual functioning of its constitutional organs in key areas is determined by so-called ‘conventions’. However, the end of this century and millennium sees a number of changes in the United Kingdom which amount to stages in the building of a constitutional edifice: the introduction of new patterns of devolved government for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales; and the adoption of the European Convention on Human Rights as part of domestic law, enforceable for the first time in our own courts. Although introduced by ordinary legislation, these measures will to a considerable extent enjoy the quality of a written constitution: they will be difficult to amend and almost impossible to repeal within any foreseeable time-scale, and they will significantly change the scope of the judicial function by giving the courts new powers to adjudicate upon the exercise of executive and legislative powers. In fact, we took the first steps towards the adoption of a more formal constitution a quarter of a century ago, when we joined the then European Economic Community, now the European Union; although it was only a few years ago that we discovered that this step had for the first time given our judges the authority, and duty, to examine the validity of Acts of parliament, and to condemn those which did not conform to our European obligations;1 subject, of course, to the over-riding views of our new Supreme Court, the European Court of Justice.
