Video 2 UK Constitution

Okay,

So what's the difference between these two countries? Um,

if the cover teacher asked a couple of

students what they think the difference might be,

then pause me and then we'll come back and I'll give you the answer.

Okay, So the difference is, uh, the United Kingdom.

Israel and New Zealand are the only three countries in

the world that do not have a written constitution.

Uh, I can't speak on behalf of Israel or New Zealand,

but many people argue the reason why the UK doesn't is

the only country in the world to not have a revolution.

And what tends to happen after revolutions

is rebuilding.

You rebuild a book building where fools and essentially

the way to do that as a constitution.

To stop disorder, you have to create order.

Having a code of conduct on how a country is run is a great way to do that.

Uh, And then you have Germany, America, France, India, and I believe Tanzania.

They all have a written constitution, as does miss the world.

So

what does this all mean?

Basically, there are two different types of constitution, written or unwritten.

The political term for it is codified and un codified.

So codified means written on codified means unwritten.

Um, I always remember the UN codified is like unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield.

I'm sure the cover teacher knows what I'm talking about,

staring at the blank page before you open up the dirty window.

Come on class and the Santa Noon and make the

word that you cannot fund beach it for something in the

touch

anyway.

So that is what an codified is.

So there are two different types of Constitution written,

unwritten, codified, unqualified. So what does that mean?

A codified Constitution is like the American one. It's all written in one place.

It's a single authority of document has a clear separation of powers,

so you'll see in the American Constitution that it says

the powers that the president has and doesn't have.

So you say the president has the power

to invade countries.

The president has the power to pardon people if you know

you can take people out of prison if they want to.

But

it explains what then powers are and what powers the president doesn't have.

And the powers that Congress has,

and the powers of the Supreme Court has We've spoken about this before, haven't we?

The triangle that is the separation of powers

and how they don't interfere with one another.

They also have enshrined, right? Americans love this.

And if you go like I say to an American secondary school and say, Hey, kids, what?

You're right. They go, Well, my right eye. Well, I can tell you all of my rights.

I have the freedom of expression, the freedom of speech.

I have the right to bear arms. I have the right to a free and fair trial.

And I think that's quite amazing as a politics teacher.

Whereas if I asked you guys most you would say

that I make, um

so they have been trying right?

Entrench constitutions with the Constitution is the highest form of law.

So there is nothing above the Constitution.

Nothing is above the Constitution in the United States.

It's also very rigid.

Now Americans say that this is the best thing about the Constitution.

This is the bit that I don't agree with them with.

So Americans will say our Constitution is amazing because you know what?

It's only been changed 27 times, and that's true.

The American Constitution has only had 27 amendments since the early 17 hundreds,

and 11 of them were two days after they were formed in the 17 hundreds.

So

fair play, whatever they wrote has stopped.

But I don't know that's a good thing. Um,

have a little discussion with the person next to you.

Why might that that not be a good thing,

having a rigid Constitution chat with the person next to you for a couple of minutes?

Suppose me.

Okay, so

hopefully some of you came up with some different answers

for me,

especially in times of covid or parliamentary gridlock like we had with Brexit.

It's really important

that you have a Constitution that moves with the times.

You could argue this is why they still have laws on guns because

because it's so rigid and hard to change that stops progress that stops you,

bringing in laws quickly.

You know,

Boris Johnson in our country created a law on covid lockdown within the day.

You could never do that in America because the Constitution

it's so hard to change, and it's so hard to edit. Um,

it's a really interesting discussion, as many people would argue with.

That's a good thing because the power shouldn't go to one person.

And you don't know what's called an elected dictatorship,

which is what we can have in this country and arguably have now.

Um,

the judiciary also have the power to strike down laws.

The Supreme Court in the US are more powerful than

any other judges on Earth because it's such a small,

basic document.

A lot of it's down to interpretation.

So the Supreme Court in the United States

can just basically interpret it however they want.

Abortion was legalised in the U. S. Through the court. Slavery was

illegal eyes

based on a Supreme Court decision based on, you know,

they believe that freedom of speech and expression has to go against slavery.

So

there's a lot of power there. It gives a lot of powers to unelected judges.

See, that might not be a good thing. This is for our big debate later.

Then you have a NCAA defied unwritten.

That is what we have in this country. So we don't have this. This doesn't exist.

We don't have a book where it's all written down.

It draws upon what's called a variety of sources,

and that's the third section of what we're going to talk about today.

Oh, hello,

that was my flatmate coming in from boxing, she said. It went well.

So anyway, then we've got sources either written or unwritten,

constitution not entrenched and rights and not enshrined.

There's nowhere where you actually have your rights written or can learn on them.

They are flexible, unwritten constitutions.

They're not drawn from a higher form of law.

The judiciary cannot strike down laws as unconstitutional because

it's hard to interpret what constitutional even means in our country.

The key bit for unwritten is the top bit there, where,

it says draws upon a variety of sources because

our Constitution, because it's not written in one place,

comes from loads of different places.

And when you understand what those those are different places are,

you start to understand how this country is actually run

and how we've managed to function for so long,

even though we don't have a written constitution.

Yeah,

so what I wanted to think about now is how did we get here?

How do we get to the place where we now have the sort of random constitution

our Constitution is very sort of gradual and happened over time.

Like I said, most constitutions are born through turmoil,

revolutions or a toppling of a of a leader.

Um,

so us with the independence, you know,

they sort of when when they sort of kicked us out, they were like, Right,

What do we do if anyone's seen Hamilton the musical?

I actually think that's a really good way

of explaining the importance of a Constitution.

Um, so it's on Disney Plus knock your socks off. So

but the U. S Constitution we had no single dramatic change or codification.

It was a slow transfer of power

and a steady increase in the rights of citizens,

especially with the Human Rights Act of 1998.

I believe you did this task yesterday, but if you didn't and you weren't here,

please take a picture of this slide and I want you to do its homework tonight.

So read through pages 144 246 and start understanding these key historical dates

before we get there. We actually have to

think about the sources of the Constitution. Okay, Now this touches on it.

This touches on it, but you might get a 10 marker on this,

but they have much more prefer asking 10 markets on the sources of the Constitution.

So what I wanted to do now,

for 20 minutes is read and make notes on the sources

of the UK Constitution from your textbook on page 148.

There's a table there

that really explains each source of the Constitution,

what it means and an example for it,

and we'll reconvene in 20 minutes.

And

okay,

so hopefully now you have a better understanding

of the sources of the UK Constitution.

There's a link here in the Power Point,

which is a really good infographic explaining things more.

I can't access it through the software,

but you could easily do it on your phones and laptops,

and you just click it and it really explains things through a pyramid of power,

which is a very political phrase.

Um, so hopefully you came up with things like this.

Parliamentary statutes laws passed by the U. K. Parliament.

This is in terms of hierarchy. It used to be EU treaties, so it used to be the EU.

Their law was above any law. Really, The EU law took precedence.

That's what the political term is.

We don't have that anymore. Some of you will be sharing.

Some of you may be a bit like Oh, God, we're on our own. Um,

so now it's up here. Statutes.

This is when it comes to our Constitution and making big decisions.

The most important are ones that come from Parliament and parliamentary statutes.

Um,

and you would have seen through the historical development how we got there.

So that's that's what matters most parliamentary statute, our code of conduct.

Essentially,

it's built up of thousands of different many

laws that have been written throughout time,

all in one book that is kind of the starting point for our Constitution.

Then you have what's called conventions,

So these are unwritten rules that are

generally followed by those involved in government

and

conventions could be anything.

I think the most important convention is before you

invade a country having a debate in Parliament.

That's a convention that's not written down anywhere.

It's just something that we've always done.

Um, so tomorrow Boris Johnson could invade Libya, and

legally he wouldn't have to console us.

But it's a convention that's always existed. It's something we've always done.

It's like having a biscuit with a cup of tea.

It's just weird if you don't,

um so it's essentially the same concept that these are

the things that have generally followed throughout time will continue to

another Really interesting one is the source of the convention.

If you see the example on the right,

that's where the House of Lords does not

obstruct proposals contained government's most recent manifestos.

That's just one of the unwritten rules of the House of Lords.

Can't stop a law where the government have promised this

in their manifesto and were elected based on it.

You then have authoritative documents. Uh, like you mentioned.

These are generally followed, but not laws. Okay, so they're like key texts. Um,

so there's three on the side there.

There's a few others that would be mentioned in the text books.

These are like really smart people writing massive

documents explaining how parliament should be run,

and the speaker often will use these.

So it's part of our Constitution to remember. These aren't all in the same place.

That's what's so mad.

They're all across the house of Commons Library,

where only posh people can read them.

Um, so you then have common law historic laws,

which are enforced by the courts but have not been passed by parliament.

That's essentially a law created by the court,

but one that exists because it's through the courts.

Law students will understand what that means.

I will go into common law a bit more later in the year.

You don't have EU treaties, but we don't really talk about that one too much,

and then you have traditions.

This is similar to conventions, historical practises of limited importance.

The Queen's speech would be one of them. We don't need to do a queen's speech.

There's nothing to say.

We need to do that, but something we've always done,

and it's kind of me getting the queen down for a day, so we just still do it.

If you're still confused on the source of the UK Constitution,

I think a really good way of graphically explaining it was the T L D R video on it.

So cover teacher, you will have received a email of the video.

If you could please play the video now it's about seven minutes long.

And if students could add to their notes based on the video,

that would be really good.

It also gives a lot of context on Brexit

and how that affects the Constitution.

So if you could pause me and move over to the video, please.

Okay, good. So hopefully now, we, um,

have got that context supplied.

Last thing I want to do,

because remembering the source of the Constitution is really,

really key as a way of understanding the Constitution,

but also as a way of actually knowing

what the Constitution looks like. If someone asked you down the street, So what?

What is our Constitution? Then you go out.

It's a variety of things from all different places statute, law and conventions,

works, authority, yada, yada, yada and then combined, they make our Constitution.

But you could get a 10 marker on this, so you need to know them.

So let's

up

last little bit before you go for lunch. Let's do a game,

Um, in your pairs or in threes.

If you haven't got someone sat next to you,

I want you to devise a three question

challenge where you make up three questions on what

you've learned today and ask the person next to you and have a little quiz and tally.

Who gets what? I will put this up here. I'm sorry. I mean, it says breakout rooms.

This was just in case we were all online, and there was a lockdown,

so

because I sort of predicted there would be one, but no. Um, So anyway,

this is what we're gonna be doing.

If you could pause me now and go through this activity, that would be great.

Please cover teacher.

Okay. Brilliant. So that is all we have to really cover for today.

So as long as you understand the sources of the UK Constitution and you can

define Constitution and have a slight idea

on some key historical moments you're there.

That's what you need to know leading up to.

Now, if you don't reinforce your knowledge,

drop me an email and I'll give you something to help you revise or, um,

remind yourself of what you've learned. Hopefully, that's been useful.

I'm never sick. So I should be in Monday. Um, so yeah, I will see you then.

Have a good day. Well done, Miss You'il. Dearly. But my my, my

Video 2 UK Constitution

Chapters

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated