The doctrine of parliamentary supremacy states that Parliament can pass any law it wants, except that it cannot bind its successors (or be restricted by its predecessors). In addition, the Constitution of the United Kingdom is not codified and instead contains informal conventions, rules of procedure of both Houses of Parliament and general laws (in particular Acts of Parliament). Therefore, the Constitution is not enshrined, as previous laws can be amended by passing legislation, which requires a simple majority in the House of Commons. The second part of this article will examine whether a procedural anchoring of rights and values might ever be desirable. It will argue that the lack of flexibility and politicization inherent in the entrenchment of procedures make it an undesirable option; While enshrining fundamental rights and values in the UK legal system is beneficial when overseen by a strong judiciary. The original purpose of this eternity clause was to ensure that the establishment of a dictatorship in Germany would be clearly illegal; In legal practice, the clause has been used by complainants before the Federal Constitutional Court against constitutional amendments to Articles 1, 10, 19, 101 and 103 with regard to restrictions on remedies. [more explanations needed] Although these basic principles are protected against repeal, their specific expression can nevertheless be modified, for example to clarify, extend or refine an established principle. However, as we will point out, manipulating formal rules is not the only way to prevent change. After all, dictators can imprison or shoot their opponents instead of neutralizing them. What is less dramatic is that parties, politicians and politicians can create political rather than legal barriers to change. Let us recall the introductory example of the reform of labour law: the incumbents can consolidate themselves in power not only by reshuffling gerrymandering or electoral restrictions, but also by neutralizing the electoral organization of the political opposition. Or recall the example of Social Security: the program is difficult to remove, not because there is a legal barrier to its repeal, but because the adoption of the program mobilized and empowered advocates to fend off subsequent political attacks.16 To illustrate, imagine a political coalition advocating for strict and sustainable environmental regulations. to prevent climate change.14 Imagine, moreover, that the coalition had gained enough power at the federal level to adopt various types of policies.
Action. Finally, imagine that the coalition fears that its power will be short-lived and that anti-regulatory political forces will eventually regain the dominance of federal politics and try to overturn the environmental policies of their predecessors. Here are four strategies the coalition could consider to anchor its agenda against repeal. Less likely, it could try to pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing certain environmental protection measures. At the sub-constitutional level, it could attempt to enact irrevocable environmental legislation. With a less direct approach, it could instead manipulate the rules of the electoral law to favour its own candidates and voters over those of the opposition, thus retaining political control and the power to pursue its regulatory agenda. Finally, it could pursue a number of functional anchoring strategies. It could create a tradable emissions program that would facilitate the training of stakeholders interested in maintaining and expanding the existing regulatory system. It could seek to drive polluting industries abroad and out of the U.S. political process.
Or it could delegate extensive regulatory powers to a politically sympathetic agency like the Environmental Protection Agency, which may be more isolated from change than political branches. All these different strategies could be seen by the coalition as functional substitutes – more or less interchangeable mechanisms to achieve the same fundamental goal. But public law would regard them as quite different, both as a matter of legal rules and normative democratic theory. The HRA and ECA are just two of the core laws that courts are increasingly accepting as part of the substantive framework of the rule of law that trumps parliamentary sovereignty. In this way, the judiciary of the last 40 years has significantly shifted the UK from a position of absolute parliamentary sovereignty to a modern, rights-based constitutional primacy with firmly entrenched rights and values and recognition of sources of law superior to those of Parliament. Hart calls this a « recognition rule. »[9] In a legal system with many sources of law, courts had to establish a hierarchy among themselves in the event of a conflict. The common law recognizes that the legislature is the highest source of law in the country.