Langues appliquées - Anglais : Economie, gestion, droit, AES - 4e - 188

law

Instructions For Study
1. Turn to the definitions following the text The UK Supreme Court. They refer to the specialist
terms printed in bold type in the list of Useful words and concepts.
2. Use an English language dictionary to find the meanings (in context) of the other words in
the list.
3. Do the exercises to test your language skills.

The UK Supreme Court
The fact that we in the United Kingdom do not have a written Constitution does not mean that
we do not have a constitution. We clearly do. But it is different from most other constitutions in
that its governing principle is that sovereign power is not distributed between the three branches of
government but resides solely in Parliament (or strictly, the Queen-in- Parliament). Parliament can
make or unmake any law.
All countries with a written constitution have a supreme or constitutional court that can truly be
called the guardian of the constitution. Countries with legal systems based on the continental European
model, such as most of Europe, Latin America and parts of the Far East, have constitutional courts
that are separate from the ordinary law courts. They all have a power of abstract review - a new or
proposed law is referred to them so that they can rule on whether or not it is constitutional. Some
also have a power of concrete review - the same question can come before them in a concrete case
involving real facts and real people. Some have exclusive jurisdiction, in that they are the only court
that can answer such questions. But some share it with the ordinary law courts.
In the common law world, which includes most of the English-speaking world as well as Israel, the
Indian sub-continent, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong, such constitutional questions are decided
by the ordinary courts, usually in the context of concrete cases, although there are some constitutions,
for example in Canada and Ireland, which allow for abstract questions on the validity of proposed
legislation to be referred to the Supreme Court for a ruling. Most of the modern constitutions on this
model provide expressly for judicial review of legislation.
The Constitution of the United States of America, adopted in 1787, together with the Bill of Rights
of 1791, did not expressly provide for the Supreme Court of the United States to strike down federal
legislation as unconstitutional, as opposed to the legislation of the States. But the Supreme Court very
soon decided, in Marbury v Madison, that this was a necessary incident of a Constitution that limited
the powers of the federal legislature.
In the United Kingdom, of course, things are different. Until 2009, the top court was a committee
of the Upper House of Parliament. The Law Lords combined the roles of judge and Parliamentarian.
Their leader, the Lord Chancellor, combined the roles of Speaker of the House of Lords, senior member
of the Government, and Head of the Judiciary. In the early years of this century, it was recognised
that, however well this arrangement had worked in practice, it could not be justified in principle.
There are three ways in which the Supreme Court Justices have definitely become the guardians of
the United Kingdom Constitution. First and most obvious is that we rule upon the validity of the laws
passed by the devolved legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom
has not become a truly federal state, because England does not have her own Parliament. But the other
parts of the United Kingdom now do have their own Parliaments with powers to pass their own laws.
If they pass laws that are ultra vires we can declare that they are 'not law'.

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