The implicitly repealled thing just means if a law says black is white. And you then pass another law to say white is white, you don't need to scrap the old one, because it's the most recent that counts. It's why you get all those Oh look at this funny old law that is still on the books videos. (they usually are laws that are contradicted by later laws and are no longer used.
The video about the British Constitution made sense to me, but then I studied Law at Cambridge University (which included a paper in Constitutional Law) and worked as a lawyer in England for 41+ years. Some people are surprised the UK doesn't have a codified Constitution but of course it DOES have a Constitution, it's just not written down in some document that can be pointed to and which might have a small number of Amendments. The best way of showing you our Constitution would be to take you to a library and say: "Over there is a pile of Statute rolls that go back 800 years, setting out the Acts made by Parliament, and over there are Law Reports showing how judges have decided cases in accordance with the Common Law and also interpreted the Statutes enacted by Parliament and given the Monarch's consent over the centuries; and over there are a few Law Books which have been written over the centuries and which set out Constitutional Conventions explaining how things operate and how various rights and powers affect each other. The Constitution is a combination of all of those. Many countries have written Constitutions over the last 300 years or so, but that doesn't seem to prevent their having periodic Revolutions or Dictatorships which ignore their constitutions. Russia, China, N Korea etc have written Constitutions. Give me a flexible uncodified Constitution like the UK's or New Zealand's any day - I know in which countries my rights as an individual would be best protected
@@michaelgoetze2103 I wasn't trying to imply that ALL countries with written Constitutions are less good at protecting individuals' rights. Some may be protective of those rights but many are clearly NOT protective. The Common Law traditionally protected the rights of individuals and the concept is, for example, that citizens do not require permission to do things but that Acts of Parliament are required, specifically prohibiting the act in question in order to prevent him doing those things. In other words a person doesn't have to point to some statute specifically saying "An adult may do X, Y and X", he can do all things not specifically prohibited. Those rights which are being asserted or exercised may go back many centuries as a matter of Common Law or be specifically referred to in ancient statutes. So many people who came before the courts in the medieval period claimed that they had been exercising rights for ages under the Common Law, that eventually it was made clear if activities etc had been carried out before there was any legal memory of their starting, in other words "since Time Immemorial" (for which the year 1189 in the reign of King Richard sufficed) then those acts or rights were protected. I suppose we might say that the constitution in its uncodified form has protected people's rights for centuries. So if a country has a written constitution, we should wait several centuries to see whether, in reality, that written constitution DOES continue to protect rights. How long should we say? How about 330 years or so? Which reminds one of the question posed to a Chinese diplomat asked what he thought about the French Revolution. He replied "It's presently too early to say...". I mean, that is only 232 years ago and, to a "freedom loving" Chinese perspective, only the blink of an eye...
@@raymondporter2094 Thanks for your reply however most written constitutions, at least in democracies, don't determine the allowed behaviour of individuals but the rights of individuals in limiting the arbitrary authority of the state. I've lived in South Africa a while and the country has a written constitution that only goes back to 1994. In 2005 the constitutional court ordered parliament to include all people regardless of sexual orientation in the marriage act. South Africa became the 5th country in the world to allow gay marriage. This would not have happened without the written constitution which demanded equality for all people as there was not a majority in parliament to do this. The constitution was only 11 years old at the time. Written constitutions can be a good anchor of legal stability for countries that do not have a long legal tradition. I think the protection of individual rights depends more on a functioning democratic system of government as only an accountable government would bend to the rulings of a judiciary that has no coercive powers.
ok Implicitly repealed, say you have a general law that covers something, and a new law is introduced that replaces parts of that law without mentioning it, the parts replaced are implicitly repealed, and that will all be ok with a judge unless the older law is constitutional. If a law has to be explicitly repealed as the older law is part of the constitution, then the new law has to explicitly say in its text "this law replaces clause x in law Y" otherwise the constitutional nature of the older law overrides whatever smart attempts the lawyers or politicians are trying
Constitutional law must be repealed by a specific Act of Parliament repealing that Law ( _in a clear and detailed manner, leaving no room for confusion or doubt_ ). For example the UK Government wanted to leave the EU without a debate and vote in Parliament (which they felt they might loose) and attempted to use their prerogative power (an act the executive government can lawfully do without the authority of an Act of Parliament) to alter the Treaties binding them to the EU. But the Supreme Court ruled that, although the executive had the power to alter treaties, the 1972 European Communities Act (passed when the UK joined the EU) was Constitutional law and that simply changing the treaties by prerogative would _implicitly_ repeal the 1972 European Communities Act, therefore Parliament had to pass an Act, called the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 that _explicitly_ repealed the 1972 European Communities Act, before it used its prerogative power to alter the treaties. The UK also has the three branches of Government Executive (the Prime minister and the other ministers of the Government), the Legislature which is Parliament (the House of Commons and the the Lords) and the and Judiciary. The House of Lords is unelected, to block Acts that introduce parts of a manifesto, would be to block the democratic vote of the people, which would not look well when done by unelected peers of the realm. The Labour party won the 1945 election by an overwhelming margin, but in the unelected House of Lords the conservatives held a overwhelming majority, the conservative leader recognised that to block the policies the people had show their clear wish for, would be unacceptable for an unelected House.
Im so sick of this nonesense, 'constitution' means 'body of law'... every country in the world has a body of law. What britain does not have is a CODIFIED constitution, meaning one based in a single document, being instead 'uncodified', meaning its comprised of separate acts of parliament, english common law, royal decrees and social consensus.
The Salisbury convention is something the US government should really take a look at. It means the minority party cannot block any legislation the ruling party promised the voters in writing during the election. This helps ensure the voter's get exactly what they voted for. If the government fails to deliver on their promises they can't get away with blaming their opponents.
I'm not sure that the Salisbury Convention has anything to do with minority parties? It prevents the Lords from blocking bills passed in the Commons when those bills were promised in the manifesto. The majority party already has almost absolute power in the Commons, thanks to FPTP. What prevents laws from being passed in the US is the fact that the House, Senate and the President can each block a bill, and these three power centres are very often split between the parties because they are elected under different schedules. Also the Senate has its ridiculous filibuster rule which means that a bill cannot pass even if it has 59-41 majority support.
No, that only makes sense in a system where the upper house is unelected as in the UK, in the US, and here in Australia, the upper house (senate) is elected and is a true house of review that keeps the bastards honest.
@@vtbn53 The Salisbury Convention has extra weight because the Government could, if it wished get rid of the House of Lords. it's in the opening of the 1911 parliament act which says on its first page "And whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation:" however it's just used as something to hold over the head of the Lords, as the Commons justification of its primacy is that it is the elected house. nobody in the commons wants that leverage taken away
Even without looking at a map I an certain the US has a least one town named Salisbury. They would do well to adopt our UK Salisbury Convention because from what I see, so much of their governmental business is done by skullduggery. The sheer amount of widespread protest seen on TV across the US with people claiming election fraud and procedural irregularities in office, chanting "We didnt vote for (Insert grevience here)" and "Not My President" bears testitiment.
I think the UK would do better to learn from the US constitution and add a fundamental protection of free speech, and restore the UK to a free society.
The other thing the video didn't mention is the crown's supervisory role. The king cannot make laws collect taxes or pretty much anything without Parliament but he can close Parliament at any time and refuse to allow them to use any of their powers. It's a deliberate catch 22 meaning if the government ever tried to become totalitarian the king could stop them dead in their tracks as all the armed forces swear allegiance to the crown not the government. Just like your own military swear allegiance to the constitution not the president.
I mean that's the theory, but if a monarch was ever going to exercise that power it would SURELY have been when Boris unlawfully prorogued parliament to prevent them from passing legislation that was inconvenient to his agenda. That episode convinced me that the Queen had absolutely no interest in any "supervisory" role. I wonder if Charles as King would have acted any differently.
@@nbartlett6538 the supreme courts power over parliament is still increasibly new and controversial. While technically illegal the queen interfering with that political process would have been unnaceptable. The judges were already hated enough by much of the public for that ruling, the monarch didn't want to get embroiled unnecessarily in that
@@nbartlett6538 That episode had Labour and their supporters in paroxisms of rage, while we Boris fans saw it as a bold bit of chicanery. The Queen's advisors would have been fully aware of it and Her Majesty executed her duty by interpretation of the circumstances. I trusted her judgment immensely and was pleased he didnt even have to stay late at school and write "I am a bad Prime Minister. I must do better" fifty times in his best hand-scribbling. I was shocked much more by the hatchet job done on him by his own party - prompted by the endemic class envy of Labour that ended a great man's career for attending a short after-hours gathering in Parliament with wine, while not wearing a mask. Unwise? Yes. But he caught covid and was hospitalised for weeks, on a knife edge between life and death. You'd think that, in the minds of 90% of reasonable people, his punishment had been more than adequately suffered. But no. There's nobody as vicious, ruthless and spiteful than an ambitious politician.
I admire the fact you are genuinely interested in the content of these videos, and want to learn. As well as imparting your own, well thought out views. another great video. Thanks!
Expressly repealed - parliament has to specifically sit down, spend time and agree to repeal the act, deleting it from the system. Impliedly repealed…they just write a new act Who’s functions supersede the old one, the old one staying on the books but being ignored- they don’t need to spend time in parliament specifically spending time to abolish the old act
Another important difference between the UK and the US is that on a change in government in the UK the whole administration does not change at the same time. There are a considerable number of posts in the US that are in the Presidential gift - the new President appoints and replaces all these posts. The equivalent posts in the UK are held by members of our civil service and are not political appointments. This ensures a smooth transition between administrations and no loss of grip on issues prevailing at the change over of power. Some would also say that it serves to moderate excessive zeal in newly appointed ministers!
It's pretty complex and takes some time to get your head round. In simple terms on explicit vs implicit, (e.g.,) to repeal the Scotland Act would require a piece of legislation which expressly refers to it directly or replaces it. It cannot be ignored or rolled over while dealing with a separate piece of legislation that might imply that it could be overruled.
Let’s say Act 1 says the age limit is 18. Then later Parliament passes Act 2, which says the age is 21. As Law 2 contradicts Law 1, Law 1 is impliedly repealed. If Law 2 said “and Law 1 no longer applies”, that’s expressly repealed. So, basically if an Act is passed that contradicts a constitutional statute, unless that Act specifically (expressly) repeals (or precludes) the constitutional statute, the constitutional statute must still have effect.
England used to have a written Constitution. In fact it had many of them in the interregnum, and none of them worked. When the monarchy was restored under Charles II in 1660, the constitution was reset for a while to the Charles I constitution. The big change happened in 1688 which created the supremacy of parliament.
We have over 12,000 years of history, yep no wonder it's complicated. We even have some Dane Laws from the Vikings, this is why towns etc have squares.
Implicitly repealed would be a new law that supersedes the existing law, for example very old laws that allowed shooting of a Scotsman within York on a Sunday whilst wearing a hat (that sort of crap) which was legal at some point in the past is repealed by a new law that says murder is illegal. The old law is still there by the newer takes precedence. Expressly repealed means parliament has to directly vote to repeal the law and not just pass a new bit of legislation that overrides the original one.
What do you mean "that sort of crap"? It sounds thoroughly logical and sensible to me. The next time I am in York I will be keeping a sharp eye out for suspicious, Scots-sounding men with cunning hat disguises!
You certainly aren't afraid of difficult subjects . Our unwritten constitution has served us pretty well over the years . The ways of making big changes take time and ensure the Political policies driving them have widespread support over that period .
2:43 “What’s the difference?”: it means that the UK’s constitution is not all brought together in a single definite document. It is a vague collection of dozens of laws which have gradually accumulated over the centuries. And it means that there isn’t a special legal procedure which needs to be followed in order to change the constitution. (For example, in the USA any constitutional amendment has to be ratified by at least 38 of the 50 states). In the UK, if you want to change the constitution you just pass a new law in the same way that any other law is enacted by Parliament.
In Iceland we have had parliament for more than 1000 years and national law dating back to the same time. Of course changed a lot through time. So it is by many European countries. US is only 240 years old and could take ideas from other countries and begin from scratch.
You need another cup of coffee, Connor😁 We pass a law about something that may be a new way of looking at something that was ruled on in an old law differently. We don't have to repeal the old law, we just ignore it and go by the new law. That's what they guy is saying. This is why there is a huge number of old laws still on the books but not used any more. We have a commission looking them out, slowly.
Your American bill of rights is based of our's here in the UK and your system of government is also very similar. Only your constitution divides our systems and given how the US was founded its understandable the founding fathers wanted to do something different.
Please, please, please; it is not "based of" or ' based off', they are meaningless. Things are said to be 'based on' something else. Let's keep our language meaning logical things despite the external pressure from some other places doing their best to turn it to brainless mush.
And to further complicate matters, the UK is still a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, which is separate from the EU, although the only legal consequence I believe is that a court can rule that a law is in breach of the convention but in doing so does not automatically repeal the law (as would be the case in the USA or Canada). A problem with the British constitution is that citizens have no unassailable rights that Parliament cannot take away with a simple majority vote. The Criminal Justice Act 1994 brought restrictions on public assembly, and removed the right to silence under police questioning. There is no right to free speech in the UK similar to the 1st Amendment rights, and the list of things that it is illegal to say in the UK continues to grow. Indeed, the mere act of offending someone, without any clear legal definition of what that meant nor with the deemed offence actually breaking any laws, still resulted in a police record for the deemed offender, and this was only paused in July 2022.
7.56 I can actually see in your eyes the penny dropping as to why millions of us voted for Brexit. This was exactly why. It wasn't something about hating foreigners.
The advantage of an unwritten constitution is that we don't need a piece of paper telling us what our rights are. If there's no law against it, we can do it. Now, that's freedom. Common law, at its most fundamental, covers things that are commonly thought to be bad. For example, there's no statute against murder in our country; no "murder act". Murder is held by everyone to be A Bad Thing, so murder is against the common law, and it's become established, by precedent, over the centuries, that you should be punished for it.
He missed out the most important piece of information at the beginning. The US constitution is a physical codified document, from which all law and authority of the state derive. This is not the case is the U.K. The constitution is based on a fundamental principle, Parliamentary Sovereignty. All power and authority derive from the sovereign in Parliament. Therefore, no Parliament can bind itself. If a new act of Parliament contradicts an older act of Parliament, it is assumed the older law is repealed by the newer one. This is the doctrine of Implied Repeal, essential to the principle that Parliament is sovereign, and can make or unmake any law it wishes.
If you have a written constitution its a pain to change any of it, even a few words. We don’t worry about that, we have a bit of history, quiet a lot in fact, to show what happened before in a set of circumstance, some court decisions we take account of, and a bit more. In addition nothings law unless the monarch takes out their biro and makes it law with a nice flourishing signature. Finally we can make a bit up as we go along, we don’t have to follow a constitution to the letter, in general that is. Sometimes that is not the case. Confused ? You will be, remember we are British not Europeans. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. But anyone who wants to reform it all is playing with fire. It will be very tricky and controversial.. by the way for all those reasons scrapping the monarchy is not a good idea. It will cause just too much grief and require massive change. Answer ? Carry on muddling threw for another thousand years or so.
The factortame case was one of the reasons that I voted for Brexit. Each european country had a quota of fish it could take from UK waters, The spanish did this so they could take part of the UKs quota so the UK tried to prevent it. The EU intervenes and the UK are fined. How fair is the EU!!!!!
To be honest, its not a particularly clear explanation. Unless you understand the relationship between the High Courts, Parliament (Common and Lords), Crown and, until recently, the EU you are going to struggle to follow this. For example the senate is not really equivalent to the Lords, to start with the Lords aren't elected. And tbh the UK is the anomaly not the USA. There are whole books written on this stuff. Basically the UK works through precedent, and the ability of one body to block another if they feel they are going too far. It's very, very easy to create a constitutional crisis in the UK which is why people are keen to avoid it.
Well done for making it through this video and kudos for engaging with complicated subjects. Maybe the best way to understand the UK system is to know that it is based on the doctrine of ‘parliamentary sovereignty’. This doctrine simply means that Parliament can make, or it can unmake, any law it pleases, and it cannot make a law that binds its successor parliaments (i.e. it cannot make a law that says that ‘this law cannot be repealed). In the US a written constitution limits the laws that can be made and the Supreme Court can strike down a law deemed unconstitutional. That is the key difference between having a constitution and not having one. (The EU example given in the video only applies because Parliament had chosen to cede some sovereignty to membership of the EU - that does not affect parliamentary sovereignty as it can equally chose not to - which it did in leaving the EU). The judiciary can find that something contravenes an existing Act of Parliament, or interpret an Act, but it cannot rule an Act of Parliament itself unlawful. As the video says, it does mean that on paper there is nothing to stop Parliament, for example, abolishing elections tomorrow. But this hasn’t happened (yet!).
So a constitutional law must be addressed directly, and rewritten/revoked. E.g. Human Rights are x, y and z. Being constitutional means you would have to actively remove that definition, rewrite it and put the new one back. Like replacing a light bulb. Meanwhile e.g. theoretical law demanding cats wear dinner jackets on Thursdays of lent while in a place of worship. Such a law relates to a cat, and not a person and so is not constitutional. As such an act could be implied as defunct by passing a law saying "Cat's fashion sense will at no time be repressed." So you added an LED to say your washer is done, but left the knackered one because it is surgically attached to the on switch. I think I get it. We have SHIT TONS of history and with that BASTARD LOTS of law. It would be like replacing every road sign with metric. Ain't nobody got time for that shit. It'll effing do law making. That is both comical and concerning.
I hate to burst your bubble Connor, but the US also has uncodified law, most specifically common law. And the United States didn't start with a clean slate either; British common law remained in effect after July 4, 1776 until overridden by American law. As a consequence, some of it still is in effect.
Basically, the UK political system is built upon a foundation of tradition. Some of which, are truly ancient. The House of Commons, House of Lords, the courts, the Monarchy and other institutions such as the Bank of England and even the media, all overlap each other and intertwine. It’s not a good idea for one of those factions, to go against any of the others overstep its authority. Exactly where the boundaries of that authority lay and who has jurisdiction in any particular area, are generally well established and agreed upon. But it can, does and has changed over time. As it’s a flexible system that can quickly adapt. As the narrator said. Generally speaking, everyone knows what you can and cannot do and everyone just sticks to it. It would be very hard for a fascist dictator to rise up, as they’d be slapped down pretty quickly by the machinations of the other factions involved in the political system. The military swears an oath of allegiance to the Sovereign who is unelected. But technically, only the Navy and Air Force are historically honour bound to the crown. The Army, is in theory supposed to be loyal to parliament. Hence why the Air Force and Navy have the Prefix “Royal” and the Army does not. It is simply referred to as the British Army.
The biggest difference between the UK and USA as regards separation of powers is in the UK a party forms the government if it can command a majority in the House of Commons and the the prime minister is themselves an ordinary elected member of the House of Commons. The fact the government by definition commands a majority in the House of Commons means there is much less chance of their legislative programme being blocked, although that depends on how big their majority is. If they have a majority over all other parties in the House of Commons of 100 MPs, say, they can do virtually what they like. If, however, their majority is only one MPs then they need to spend more time persuading, cajoling, etc. The govt. can still have its programme blocked by the second chamber, the House of Lords, but two things might prevent that. First, under the Salisbury Convention the Lords promises not to block things that was in the government's manifest when it got elected in. Second, by exception the House of Commons can use the rarely used Parliament Act 2010 to ensure when the Commons and Lords are contradicting, over important issues the Lords can delay things for only one year.
We work a lot by "gentleman's agreement" generally understood rules and guidelines, publicly acceptable codes of conduct. It makes for a fluid adoption of new laws. Unlike the states where dispute 40,000 gun deaths and 50,000 gun injuries per year, you can't change the law without a total breakdown of the constitution. Our systems meant that, when a dozen school kids were shot and killed,we could tighten regulations to try and stop it happening again.
Basically if a law is considered a "constitutional law" you can't just make a new law that contradicts the old law. You have to repeal the old law and actively replace it. The US is not quite as much a clean slate as you might think. It is actually largely based on what the UK was at the time, except with an elected king and an elected house of lords (Senate).... It may not appear as obvious today as the UK has moved on significantly since then, as the monarchs powers are now mostly symbolic, while the POTUS remains very powerful. Yes, you did understand the manifesto aspect, and the US would probably be better if they worked on that principal too.
None of the so called ‘constitutional statutes’ are really safe from repeal since Brexit. Whilst members of the EU the U.K. maintained a different constitutional arrangement than usual. Since leaving, full sovereignty of Parliament has been restored. Parliament can pass any law which both the House of Lords and House of Commons vote for, signed off by the monarch.
Yes, you got it right with the manifesto and the Salisbury law. In Australia we don't have a Salisbery law, but we have the idea of a winning party having a 'Mandate" to pass the laws that they promised they would pass in the election campaign. So if the Labor Party promises they will bring in a Carbon Tax, and wins government, then no sneaky deals in the Upper House should be made to stop the Carbon Tax. However, at the next election the Liberal National Party coalition could promise to repeal the new Carbon Tax. If they win, they have a mandate to get rid of the Carbon Tax. In Australia we got universal health care over 3 elections. First Labor created it in 1973 or so. Then the Liberals said it was too expensive, it should go, and they won the next election and got rid of universal health care. Then Labour went to the NEXT election saying: No really, universal healthcare was really really good, and benefited Australia more than it cost. We should bring it back. And Labor won in a landslide, because most people missed having universal healthcare after they had had a taste of what it was like. The landslide win was so big, that the conservatives in Australia have not dared to propose we get rid of it again. However they do habitually cut its budget when they get into power.
In York, the law states that it is legal to shoot a Scotsman with a crossbow upon seeing one, except for on Sundays. However, any Scotsman caught drunk or with a weapon can still be shot on a Sunday, Also in Chester, it is technically ok to shoot a Welshman after midnight on Sunday with a crossbow, as long as it's in the city walls. These laws hundreds of years old but still "on the books" How ever, you would still get done under newer laws that have superceed them and are "Implied" they have never been "Expressly" repealed, or is it vice verca it's confusing me too.
It's very simple once you get the concept of implicit/explicit. Imagine a normal law that says : corporate tax is 15% for all companies and then a new law is voted by the parliament that increase the corporate tax which is 20% now. Without even having to repeal the old law, it's the new law that applies. The old law was implicitly removed. From what I understand from this video, a statute law can't be removed like that. You can't pass a new law that contradicts it. You need to explicitly/expressly repeal the statute law before passing a new law that isn't compatible with this old law. Pass a new law that contradict an older one => the new law is applied and not the old one => the older law has been implicitly repealed because you didn't repeal it directly but the effect is the same. Repealing a law = explicitly/expressly repealed. In fact, removing/changing a statute law requires a step more than the normal law : you need the parliament to do a vote to remove this law before passing the new one. That's the only thing you need to remember.
i sincerely feel for you. the graphics in this 'thing' are just like someone turning up a series of 'cards', then rambling on in a one dimentional monologue. Meanwhile you are trying desperately to relate it to what you know, and not 'getting' (like many people in the UK) what all those unelected people (lords & ladies) are doing with the power to block everything an elected government decides. ...
My knowledge of English Law is to A level, and I found the video a brilliant refresher. I so wish that you could have had someone available to answer your questions as you proceeded, as so much required a grasp of what went before. While I am in no way a legal pr constitutional authority, and admit to being unable to give a definitive answer in so many situations, reading some of the comments it is clear to me that some of the posters are of the 'I think therefore it is' persuasion giving their opinions far more validity than any contradictory facts.
Your not going to understand this in a few minutes, I find it confusing. Stop and rewind as much as you like it's going to make it worse. Good luck trying though. This may be a video you should watch first and just offer opinions ehen you understand it.
If you think of repealing laws like decorating a house. Explicit repeal is steaming the old wallpaper and stripping it off before putting the new wallpaper up. Implicit repeal is putting the new wallpaper on top of the old. The old stuff is still there, but it's covered and doesn't matter any more
Simply take away the basic fact that there isn't a written Constitution, unlike the US one. What we have is not written in stone, and therefore can allow for flexibility (as well as muddle!).
Implicit repeal is just a new law overriding an old one. If the government passed a law that everyone had to drink a litre of apple juice on sunday, then passed one after that made apple juice illegal, the later law is the one that is enforced. Constitutional laws cannot be repealed in this way and have to be repealed via the passing of a statute law repeal bill. A better example of common law is when is Somerset vs Stewart. A slave was brought to England with his master and escaped, when he was caught the owner wished to take him back to Jamaica to be sold. A judge ruled that there was no basis in English law for enslaving people, so any slave that set foot on English soil became free at that moment. This then became common law as the judgement set a precedent.
12:20 imagine what it would be like in the USA if the senate was not elected. The House of Representatives would have more legitimacy and authority, so the Senate would agree not to vote against things which have been passed by the House.
Implicitly repealed = a new law overrides an old law either in part or full meaning new laws take precedence over the old law, i.e. That the parts of the old law are effectively repealed while the new law is in effect. Explicitly repealed = the old law has been removed by action of parliament with or without a new being made to replace it. What they are saying is that if a law if judged to have a fundamental effect on people and their relationship to the state (and I presume between bodies within the state) then you have to actively get rid of the old law before you can have a new one which is harder to do and requires more scrutiny then just making a new law that overrides the old one.
For the implicitly removed or repealed - it means they actually don't remove/ repeal the law, they simply ignore it and take notice of the new one. Maybe like London taxis needing to carry a bale of hay
Countries with a fixed constitution such as the US are fixed into the period and ideals at the time it was written. Luckily the 18th century was not a bad time to fix a constitution. If Britain had a fixed constitution we would be trapped in the Dark Ages. Love your intelligent questions and deep thinking.
Okay, that's total BS. Every explicit constitution comes with a way of altering it. In the US it's amendments, in The Netherlands it's changes to the text.
The uk has the judiciary (Supreme Court), legislative (House of Commons & House of Lords) and executive (the prime minister and government, and the king who needs to sign all acts of parliament before they can become a law)
I agree but the difference between the US and the UK is that the three branches of government overlap each other far more in the UK than the US. Until 2005 when the UK Supreme Court was established, the highest court in the land was the House of Lords - an overlap between the judiciary and the legislature. The speaker of the House of Lords was the Lord Chancellor, the head of the judiciary. The executive in the UK (the Government and the sovereign) is a subset of the legislature (Parliament): there are no outsiders allowed.
@@MrBulky992 Yes, it’s interesting you mention the Lord Chancellor. He was a Cabinet member (in the Executive), thus by convention he was an MP (in the Legislature) and sat as a judge (in the Judiciary). Indeed, the current Lord Chancellor is in two branches, and is responsible for the smooth running of the third. The lines are very blurry indeed!
@@evantighe696 Yes, you are right! The Lord Chancellor was a member of all three "arms of government": the executive (a member of the cabinet), the judiciary and the legislature. He was also allowed to be a member of the House of Commons (MP) and sit in both houses but, after 1587, none ever were: from then until 2005, he was always a full member of the House of Lords where he acted as speaker too! Nowadays, the Lord Chancellor can be an MP in the House of Commons rather than a Lord and invariably is. The Lord Chancellor no longer acts as speaker of the House of Lords (there is now a Lord Speaker) and is no longer head of the judiciary (that's now the Lord Chief Justice) and the most recent people in the post - which doubles with the cabinet post of Minister of Justice - have no legal training (those who do are allowed to wear the full-bottomed wig on state occasions). So, in summary, the Lord Chancellor is now a member of the executive (in the cabinet) and the legislature (House of Commons usually) but no longer of the judiciary.
@@evantighe696 One other thing about the Lord Chancellor: he/she is Lord Chancellor of Great Britain and not of the UK. The post in Scotland was abolished in 1707 and the Lord Chancellor of England became the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain. In 1801, unlike with Scotland, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland remained in post until 1922 and those responsibilities are now exercised by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
The most interesting Convention, recently receiving attention, was the Lascelles Principles: that set out the circumstances whereby the Monarch could refuse the Dissolution of Parliament after a request by the Prime Minister. It has long been suggested that Margaret Thatcher attempted to keep her position, in 1990, by threatening a general election and jeopardising the marginal seats of her rebellious backbenchers but for some reason the Queen refused to agree; the Monarch is supposed to follow the considered advice of their ministers, by long standing convention. However, in certain circumstances their Majesties can refuse the Prime Minister's advice/request in accordance with the Lascelles Convention. The convention lays out the argument for refusing the PM: 1. If the existing Parliament is still "vital, viable, and capable of doing its job", 2. If a general election would be "detrimental to the national economy", and 3. If the sovereign could "rely on finding another prime minister who could govern for a reasonable period with a working majority in the House of Commons". When the Queen refused in accordance with these principles Margaret Thatcher lost her power to threaten her enemies with possibly losing their seats, and was ousted.
So the whole explicit, implicit thing, it's kinda like this: Imagine I'm the government, and I pass the Sunday Shopping Act, which bans shops from opening on Sundays. After the election, the government passes a new Retail Regulations Act, which covers a lot of things, including that shops can be open 24 hours. Now even though it hasn't mentioned shopping on Sunday, obviously that old law can't still be enforceable if shops can be open whenever they want. The Sunday Shopping Act has therefore been implicitly repealed. It's still in the law book, but newer laws mean it's been overruled. If the new government instead passed a Sunday Shopping (Repeal) Act, then the new law specifically states the old law has been removed in exact words. It has been explicitly repealed. Hope that helps 🙂
Implicitly repeales means in this case that law is repealed by a new lawthat contradicts it, therefore new law makes old one invalid. Explicitly repealed means it was repealed by a specific resolution to repeal this law/act. Connor, I have a feeling you do not understand what exactly is a constitution. Constitution, is sometimes called a fundamental law, and it describes basically how government works and functions. US constitution blends its role with a bill of rights so it may be confusing. In principle, constitution describes what system of governance country has. 9:48 Clean slate? Come on, thats borderline racist. 11:04 A Law that has no punishment for breaking it might still be there for legality's sake. Its existence might invalidate any acts commited with violation of such law. Example: Passing a bill in violation of law might bear no punishment, but such bill might be stricken down as null and void due to being passed in violation of law.
Implicit v Explicit : An act would be IMPLICETLY repealed if it covered the same area as a previous act (eg an update to the Tax Code), in that case the previous act does not need to be repealed on its own, the new act IMPLICETLY repeals (overrides) it. In the example given, The UK Govt could not just pass a new Scotland Act and amend the powers of the Scottish Government (a Devolved Administration) because it has Constitutional Implications. The previous Scotland act MUST be EXPLICETLY repealed to allow any changes or a new Act . Hope that helps!
On the other side you have a very strong constitution in the US. Or so its seamed until Trump lost tje election and everyone could se how the US almost went through a coup. So what system is the best is hard to know. And also respect that democracy must be upheld by heart (culture) and not only by law
I see it as good and bad, good that it means we can be very adaptable and quickly too, bad because theres nothing in place telling our politicion's not to do something. Meaning we can get certain corrupt politicions in pushing for corrupt laws.
Don’t fret, watching this took my head a little while too. As a terrible analogy… If there’s a law that says “women are men’s property” but a new law states that “all people are free individuals” then this new law overrules the last rule so whilst technically it’s still in effect, the law that states people are free overrides it so that old law can’t be used.
Many laws are about the relationship between people, not between people and the state. Theft or murder, or what rights you have in your job, or when you buy something for example.
To enter the EU you need 3 seperate branches of government. It's why Poland has gotten into trouble with the EU as the legislative branch is messing with the judicial one. I haven't looked much into it but that's the summary I've heard. From a Belgian perspective the US barely has those 3 seperate branches. Things like the supreme court being a tad uncomfortably close connected to the senate. Which is causing a lot of trust issues between the American public and today's supreme court. Late 1700's wasn't exactly a time we had most of this stuff figured out. Again as a Belgian I'm especially uncomfortable with how much power the US president has been able to accumulate in recent decades. A law that was implicitely repealed was that women in Paris were unable to wear pants except when horse riding(simplified but whatever). This was repealed somewhere after the 2000's(edit: looked it up, repealed in 2013 as a bit of a publicity stunt so that minister could come out with a win that was at the end of the day useless) though of course unnecessarily so. It was overruled by new laws. It was implicitely repealed.
Basically joining the EU requires the country to put in its own laws (generally its constitution) that where applicable per the agreements, that EU law supersedes other laws in that country. This is limited to areas where the EU has been delegated that authority by that country. The country is still sovereign and can, should it decide, to repeal the laws that delegate that authority to the EU. This was very close in the case of Brexit, where many of the conservatives were pushing for basically what would be a nuclear option in terms of international agreements.
For the American audience it is similar to state and federal law. Each state can create their own laws which are different to other states and have their own Supreme Court. But the federal Supreme Court has jurisdiction over all 50 states and their rulings supersede state rulings. The EU court functions in a similar way
Any law the high court deems constitutional has to be expressly repealed ie. Parliament has to pass an act destroying this law to get it off the books. Non constitutional laws can simply be over ruled by newer laws without being repealed. This is part of the function of the house of Lords to review any new law to ensure it doesn't infringe on any constitutional laws.
I respectfully say you are incorrect. Technically no law is ‘constitutional’. Parliament is sovereign. Parliament cannot be compelled by the Supreme Court (not the high court) to repeal a statute. The Supreme Court of the U.K. can rule a statute incompatible with the Human Rights Act, but cannot strike down an Act of Parliament/Statute. Neither can the court compel parliament to expressly repeal a Statute. Ultimately, the judiciary does no more, or less, under the Supreme Court Act 1998, than carry out its constitutional function of interpreting and applying the law enacted by Parliament. They only have such power as Parliament gave them in the Human Rights Act 1998. Parliament can take these powers away by simply passing a new Act of Parliament. The doctrine of implied repeal would apply regardless of the constitutional nature of the statute.
The implicitly repealled thing just means if a law says black is white. And you then pass another law to say white is white, you don't need to scrap the old one, because it's the most recent that counts. It's why you get all those Oh look at this funny old law that is still on the books videos. (they usually are laws that are contradicted by later laws and are no longer used.
The video about the British Constitution made sense to me, but then I studied Law at Cambridge University (which included a paper in Constitutional Law) and worked as a lawyer in England for 41+ years.
Some people are surprised the UK doesn't have a codified Constitution but of course it DOES have a Constitution, it's just not written down in some document that can be pointed to and which might have a small number of Amendments. The best way of showing you our Constitution would be to take you to a library and say: "Over there is a pile of Statute rolls that go back 800 years, setting out the Acts made by Parliament, and over there are Law Reports showing how judges have decided cases in accordance with the Common Law and also interpreted the Statutes enacted by Parliament and given the Monarch's consent over the centuries; and over there are a few Law Books which have been written over the centuries and which set out Constitutional Conventions explaining how things operate and how various rights and powers affect each other. The Constitution is a combination of all of those.
Many countries have written Constitutions over the last 300 years or so, but that doesn't seem to prevent their having periodic Revolutions or Dictatorships which ignore their constitutions. Russia, China, N Korea etc have written Constitutions. Give me a flexible uncodified Constitution like the UK's or New Zealand's any day - I know in which countries my rights as an individual would be best protected
@@raymondporter2094 Why are you trying to imply that countries with written constitutions are not so good at protecting individual rights?
@@michaelgoetze2103 I wasn't trying to imply that ALL countries with written Constitutions are less good at protecting individuals' rights. Some may be protective of those rights but many are clearly NOT protective.
The Common Law traditionally protected the rights of individuals and the concept is, for example, that citizens do not require permission to do things but that Acts of Parliament are required, specifically prohibiting the act in question in order to prevent him doing those things. In other words a person doesn't have to point to some statute specifically saying "An adult may do X, Y and X", he can do all things not specifically prohibited.
Those rights which are being asserted or exercised may go back many centuries as a matter of Common Law or be specifically referred to in ancient statutes. So many people who came before the courts in the medieval period claimed that they had been exercising rights for ages under the Common Law, that eventually it was made clear if activities etc had been carried out before there was any legal memory of their starting, in other words "since Time Immemorial" (for which the year 1189 in the reign of King Richard sufficed) then those acts or rights were protected.
I suppose we might say that the constitution in its uncodified form has protected people's rights for centuries. So if a country has a written constitution, we should wait several centuries to see whether, in reality, that written constitution DOES continue to protect rights. How long should we say? How about 330 years or so?
Which reminds one of the question posed to a Chinese diplomat asked what he thought about the French Revolution. He replied "It's presently too early to say...". I mean, that is only 232 years ago and, to a "freedom loving" Chinese perspective, only the blink of an eye...
@@raymondporter2094 Thanks for your reply however most written constitutions, at least in democracies, don't determine the allowed behaviour of individuals but the rights of individuals in limiting the arbitrary authority of the state. I've lived in South Africa a while and the country has a written constitution that only goes back to 1994. In 2005 the constitutional court ordered parliament to include all people regardless of sexual orientation in the marriage act. South Africa became the 5th country in the world to allow gay marriage. This would not have happened without the written constitution which demanded equality for all people as there was not a majority in parliament to do this. The constitution was only 11 years old at the time. Written constitutions can be a good anchor of legal stability for countries that do not have a long legal tradition. I think the protection of individual rights depends more on a functioning democratic system of government as only an accountable government would bend to the rulings of a judiciary that has no coercive powers.
ok Implicitly repealed, say you have a general law that covers something, and a new law is introduced that replaces parts of that law without mentioning it, the parts replaced are implicitly repealed, and that will all be ok with a judge unless the older law is constitutional. If a law has to be explicitly repealed as the older law is part of the constitution, then the new law has to explicitly say in its text "this law replaces clause x in law Y" otherwise the constitutional nature of the older law overrides whatever smart attempts the lawyers or politicians are trying
Constitutional law must be repealed by a specific Act of Parliament repealing that Law ( _in a clear and detailed manner, leaving no room for confusion or doubt_ ). For example the UK Government wanted to leave the EU without a debate and vote in Parliament (which they felt they might loose) and attempted to use their prerogative power (an act the executive government can lawfully do without the authority of an Act of Parliament) to alter the Treaties binding them to the EU. But the Supreme Court ruled that, although the executive had the power to alter treaties, the 1972 European Communities Act (passed when the UK joined the EU) was Constitutional law and that simply changing the treaties by prerogative would _implicitly_ repeal the 1972 European Communities Act, therefore Parliament had to pass an Act, called the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 that _explicitly_ repealed the 1972 European Communities Act, before it used its prerogative power to alter the treaties.
The UK also has the three branches of Government Executive (the Prime minister and the other ministers of the Government), the Legislature which is Parliament (the House of Commons and the the Lords) and the and Judiciary. The House of Lords is unelected, to block Acts that introduce parts of a manifesto, would be to block the democratic vote of the people, which would not look well when done by unelected peers of the realm. The Labour party won the 1945 election by an overwhelming margin, but in the unelected House of Lords the conservatives held a overwhelming majority, the conservative leader recognised that to block the policies the people had show their clear wish for, would be unacceptable for an unelected House.
Im so sick of this nonesense, 'constitution' means 'body of law'... every country in the world has a body of law. What britain does not have is a CODIFIED constitution, meaning one based in a single document, being instead 'uncodified', meaning its comprised of separate acts of parliament, english common law, royal decrees and social consensus.
the cabinet Manual would have been Sir Humphry's job.
The Salisbury convention is something the US government should really take a look at. It means the minority party cannot block any legislation the ruling party promised the voters in writing during the election. This helps ensure the voter's get exactly what they voted for. If the government fails to deliver on their promises they can't get away with blaming their opponents.
I'm not sure that the Salisbury Convention has anything to do with minority parties? It prevents the Lords from blocking bills passed in the Commons when those bills were promised in the manifesto. The majority party already has almost absolute power in the Commons, thanks to FPTP. What prevents laws from being passed in the US is the fact that the House, Senate and the President can each block a bill, and these three power centres are very often split between the parties because they are elected under different schedules. Also the Senate has its ridiculous filibuster rule which means that a bill cannot pass even if it has 59-41 majority support.
No, that only makes sense in a system where the upper house is unelected as in the UK, in the US, and here in Australia, the upper house (senate) is elected and is a true house of review that keeps the bastards honest.
@@vtbn53 The Salisbury Convention has extra weight because the Government could, if it wished get rid of the House of Lords. it's in the opening of the 1911 parliament act which says on its first page "And whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation:"
however it's just used as something to hold over the head of the Lords, as the Commons justification of its primacy is that it is the elected house. nobody in the commons wants that leverage taken away
Even without looking at a map I an certain the US has a least one town named Salisbury. They would do well to adopt our UK Salisbury Convention because from what I see, so much of their governmental business is done by skullduggery. The sheer amount of widespread protest seen on TV across the US with people claiming election fraud and procedural irregularities in office, chanting "We didnt vote for (Insert grevience here)" and "Not My President" bears testitiment.
I think the UK would do better to learn from the US constitution and add a fundamental protection of free speech, and restore the UK to a free society.
The other thing the video didn't mention is the crown's supervisory role. The king cannot make laws collect taxes or pretty much anything without Parliament but he can close Parliament at any time and refuse to allow them to use any of their powers. It's a deliberate catch 22 meaning if the government ever tried to become totalitarian the king could stop them dead in their tracks as all the armed forces swear allegiance to the crown not the government. Just like your own military swear allegiance to the constitution not the president.
I mean that's the theory, but if a monarch was ever going to exercise that power it would SURELY have been when Boris unlawfully prorogued parliament to prevent them from passing legislation that was inconvenient to his agenda. That episode convinced me that the Queen had absolutely no interest in any "supervisory" role. I wonder if Charles as King would have acted any differently.
@@nbartlett6538 the supreme courts power over parliament is still increasibly new and controversial. While technically illegal the queen interfering with that political process would have been unnaceptable. The judges were already hated enough by much of the public for that ruling, the monarch didn't want to get embroiled unnecessarily in that
@@nbartlett6538 That episode had Labour and their supporters in paroxisms of rage, while we Boris fans saw it as a bold bit of chicanery. The Queen's advisors would have been fully aware of it and Her Majesty executed her duty by interpretation of the circumstances. I trusted her judgment immensely and was pleased he didnt even have to stay late at school and write "I am a bad Prime Minister. I must do better" fifty times in his best hand-scribbling. I was shocked much more by the hatchet job done on him by his own party - prompted by the endemic class envy of Labour that ended a great man's career for attending a short after-hours gathering in Parliament with wine, while not wearing a mask. Unwise? Yes. But he caught covid and was hospitalised for weeks, on a knife edge between life and death. You'd think that, in the minds of 90% of reasonable people, his punishment had been more than adequately suffered. But no. There's nobody as vicious, ruthless and spiteful than an ambitious politician.
In practice, the Monarch might just get away with it once.
@@neilpickup237 victoria managed it when she refused to allow peele to form a government
I admire the fact you are genuinely interested in the content of these videos, and want to learn. As well as imparting your own, well thought out views. another great video. Thanks!
yeah the code civil is much easy er ish
Expressly repealed - parliament has to specifically sit down, spend time and agree to repeal the act, deleting it from the system. Impliedly repealed…they just write a new act Who’s functions supersede the old one, the old one staying on the books but being ignored- they don’t need to spend time in parliament specifically spending time to abolish the old act
Another important difference between the UK and the US is that on a change in government in the UK the whole administration does not change at the same time. There are a considerable number of posts in the US that are in the Presidential gift - the new President appoints and replaces all these posts. The equivalent posts in the UK are held by members of our civil service and are not political appointments. This ensures a smooth transition between administrations and no loss of grip on issues prevailing at the change over of power. Some would also say that it serves to moderate excessive zeal in newly appointed ministers!
Exactly so, and why Connor never quite gets the central conceit of Yes, (Prime) Minister
We don't have gavels in British courts - we have gavels in auction rooms
... and (revived) Edwardian music halls.
It's pretty complex and takes some time to get your head round. In simple terms on explicit vs implicit, (e.g.,) to repeal the Scotland Act would require a piece of legislation which expressly refers to it directly or replaces it. It cannot be ignored or rolled over while dealing with a separate piece of legislation that might imply that it could be overruled.
Let’s say Act 1 says the age limit is 18. Then later Parliament passes Act 2, which says the age is 21. As Law 2 contradicts Law 1, Law 1 is impliedly repealed.
If Law 2 said “and Law 1 no longer applies”, that’s expressly repealed.
So, basically if an Act is passed that contradicts a constitutional statute, unless that Act specifically (expressly) repeals (or precludes) the constitutional statute, the constitutional statute must still have effect.
Thank you for that concise explanation - I was losing the will to live watching that video 🫤
@@MsCheesemonster13 haha 2 years of law school has served me well 😂
England used to have a written Constitution. In fact it had many of them in the interregnum, and none of them worked. When the monarchy was restored under Charles II in 1660, the constitution was reset for a while to the Charles I constitution. The big change happened in 1688 which created the supremacy of parliament.
We have over 12,000 years of history, yep no wonder it's complicated. We even have some Dane Laws from the Vikings, this is why towns etc have squares.
Implicitly repealed would be a new law that supersedes the existing law, for example very old laws that allowed shooting of a Scotsman within York on a Sunday whilst wearing a hat (that sort of crap) which was legal at some point in the past is repealed by a new law that says murder is illegal. The old law is still there by the newer takes precedence. Expressly repealed means parliament has to directly vote to repeal the law and not just pass a new bit of legislation that overrides the original one.
What do you mean "that sort of crap"? It sounds thoroughly logical and sensible to me. The next time I am in York I will be keeping a sharp eye out for suspicious, Scots-sounding men with cunning hat disguises!
yes. and would it have been so difficult for the vid. to have illustrated it that simply? cheers T'Bell
You certainly aren't afraid of difficult subjects . Our unwritten constitution has served us pretty well over the years . The ways of making big changes take time and ensure the Political policies driving them have widespread support over that period .
Thanks for that Connor. I was as bemused as you. Going for a lie down and a cup,of tea to recover.🇬🇧
the Salisbury convention is a work of proper common sense , and great
... and, it seems to me, an act of self-preservation by an unelected body with no democratic accountability.
2:43 “What’s the difference?”: it means that the UK’s constitution is not all brought together in a single definite document. It is a vague collection of dozens of laws which have gradually accumulated over the centuries. And it means that there isn’t a special legal procedure which needs to be followed in order to change the constitution. (For example, in the USA any constitutional amendment has to be ratified by at least 38 of the 50 states). In the UK, if you want to change the constitution you just pass a new law in the same way that any other law is enacted by Parliament.
Come on watch LANCE FINDS GOLD, DETECTORISTS. you will love it.👌👍
In Iceland we have had parliament for more than 1000 years and national law dating back to the same time. Of course changed a lot through time. So it is by many European countries. US is only 240 years old and could take ideas from other countries and begin from scratch.
You need another cup of coffee, Connor😁 We pass a law about something that may be a new way of looking at something that was ruled on in an old law differently. We don't have to repeal the old law, we just ignore it and go by the new law. That's what they guy is saying. This is why there is a huge number of old laws still on the books but not used any more. We have a commission looking them out, slowly.
my favourite bit is when a PM loses power and the removal van in outside 10 downing street at 6am the day after.
The EU overiding UK law is one of the main reasons people voted to leave the EU.
Your surprise on learning EU Law was above UK Law, should give you some insight into why we voted to leave that organisation.
Your American bill of rights is based of our's here in the UK and your system of government is also very similar. Only your constitution divides our systems and given how the US was founded its understandable the founding fathers wanted to do something different.
Please, please, please; it is not "based of" or ' based off', they are meaningless. Things are said to be 'based on' something else. Let's keep our language meaning logical things despite the external pressure from some other places doing their best to turn it to brainless mush.
And to further complicate matters, the UK is still a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, which is separate from the EU, although the only legal consequence I believe is that a court can rule that a law is in breach of the convention but in doing so does not automatically repeal the law (as would be the case in the USA or Canada).
A problem with the British constitution is that citizens have no unassailable rights that Parliament cannot take away with a simple majority vote. The Criminal Justice Act 1994 brought restrictions on public assembly, and removed the right to silence under police questioning. There is no right to free speech in the UK similar to the 1st Amendment rights, and the list of things that it is illegal to say in the UK continues to grow. Indeed, the mere act of offending someone, without any clear legal definition of what that meant nor with the deemed offence actually breaking any laws, still resulted in a police record for the deemed offender, and this was only paused in July 2022.
7.56 I can actually see in your eyes the penny dropping as to why millions of us voted for Brexit. This was exactly why. It wasn't something about hating foreigners.
The advantage of an unwritten constitution is that we don't need a piece of paper telling us what our rights are. If there's no law against it, we can do it. Now, that's freedom.
Common law, at its most fundamental, covers things that are commonly thought to be bad. For example, there's no statute against murder in our country; no "murder act". Murder is held by everyone to be A Bad Thing, so murder is against the common law, and it's become established, by precedent, over the centuries, that you should be punished for it.
He missed out the most important piece of information at the beginning.
The US constitution is a physical codified document, from which all law and authority of the state derive. This is not the case is the U.K. The constitution is based on a fundamental principle, Parliamentary Sovereignty. All power and authority derive from the sovereign in Parliament. Therefore, no Parliament can bind itself. If a new act of Parliament contradicts an older act of Parliament, it is assumed the older law is repealed by the newer one. This is the doctrine of Implied Repeal, essential to the principle that Parliament is sovereign, and can make or unmake any law it wishes.
America didn't really have to make it from scratch. Through history, there's been a republic with senate, most notably Rome (romans)
I feel your pain, I'm British and i can't understand it either lol
If you have a written constitution its a pain to change any of it, even a few words. We don’t worry about that, we have a bit of history, quiet a lot in fact, to show what happened before in a set of circumstance, some court decisions we take account of, and a bit more. In addition nothings law unless the monarch takes out their biro and makes it law with a nice flourishing signature. Finally we can make a bit up as we go along, we don’t have to follow a constitution to the letter, in general that is. Sometimes that is not the case. Confused ? You will be, remember we are British not Europeans. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. But anyone who wants to reform it all is playing with fire. It will be very tricky and controversial.. by the way for all those reasons scrapping the monarchy is not a good idea. It will cause just too much grief and require massive change. Answer ? Carry on muddling threw for another thousand years or so.
Conor..you're messing with my head..why are you on the left side?
I'm from the UK Maybe I'm not used to change......
Brilliant - haven't laughed so much for years watching your brain try to keep up with your mouth.
But first comment. How cool am I.
The factortame case was one of the reasons that I voted for Brexit. Each european country had a quota of fish it could take from UK waters, The spanish did this so they could take part of the UKs quota so the UK tried to prevent it. The EU intervenes and the UK are fined. How fair is the EU!!!!!
Very. Serves the UK right for trying to go back on what it agreed to.
To be honest, its not a particularly clear explanation.
Unless you understand the relationship between the High Courts, Parliament (Common and Lords), Crown and, until recently, the EU you are going to struggle to follow this. For example the senate is not really equivalent to the Lords, to start with the Lords aren't elected. And tbh the UK is the anomaly not the USA.
There are whole books written on this stuff. Basically the UK works through precedent, and the ability of one body to block another if they feel they are going too far. It's very, very easy to create a constitutional crisis in the UK which is why people are keen to avoid it.
UK judges NEVER use gavels.
That is why we wanted Brexit!!
Well done for making it through this video and kudos for engaging with complicated subjects. Maybe the best way to understand the UK system is to know that it is based on the doctrine of ‘parliamentary sovereignty’. This doctrine simply means that Parliament can make, or it can unmake, any law it pleases, and it cannot make a law that binds its successor parliaments (i.e. it cannot make a law that says that ‘this law cannot be repealed). In the US a written constitution limits the laws that can be made and the Supreme Court can strike down a law deemed unconstitutional. That is the key difference between having a constitution and not having one. (The EU example given in the video only applies because Parliament had chosen to cede some sovereignty to membership of the EU - that does not affect parliamentary sovereignty as it can equally chose not to - which it did in leaving the EU). The judiciary can find that something contravenes an existing Act of Parliament, or interpret an Act, but it cannot rule an Act of Parliament itself unlawful. As the video says, it does mean that on paper there is nothing to stop Parliament, for example, abolishing elections tomorrow. But this hasn’t happened (yet!).
thanks for helping (english) me to understand that *-*
implicitly repealed , new act over ruling old act , explicitly repealed , you HAVE TO repeal it .
I'm so glad we left the EU
Third like. I’ll get that first one one day. Keep it up Connor. You keep us sane.
So a constitutional law must be addressed directly, and rewritten/revoked.
E.g. Human Rights are x, y and z.
Being constitutional means you would have to actively remove that definition, rewrite it and put the new one back. Like replacing a light bulb.
Meanwhile e.g. theoretical law demanding cats wear dinner jackets on Thursdays of lent while in a place of worship.
Such a law relates to a cat, and not a person and so is not constitutional. As such an act could be implied as defunct by passing a law saying "Cat's fashion sense will at no time be repressed." So you added an LED to say your washer is done, but left the knackered one because it is surgically attached to the on switch.
I think I get it. We have SHIT TONS of history and with that BASTARD LOTS of law. It would be like replacing every road sign with metric. Ain't nobody got time for that shit. It'll effing do law making. That is both comical and concerning.
I hate to burst your bubble Connor, but the US also has uncodified law, most specifically common law. And the United States didn't start with a clean slate either; British common law remained in effect after July 4, 1776 until overridden by American law. As a consequence, some of it still is in effect.
Basically, the UK political system is built upon a foundation of tradition. Some of which, are truly ancient.
The House of Commons, House of Lords, the courts, the Monarchy and other institutions such as the Bank of England and even the media, all overlap each other and intertwine. It’s not a good idea for one of those factions, to go against any of the others overstep its authority. Exactly where the boundaries of that authority lay and who has jurisdiction in any particular area, are generally well established and agreed upon. But it can, does and has changed over time. As it’s a flexible system that can quickly adapt. As the narrator said.
Generally speaking, everyone knows what you can and cannot do and everyone just sticks to it. It would be very hard for a fascist dictator to rise up, as they’d be slapped down pretty quickly by the machinations of the other factions involved in the political
system.
The military swears an oath of allegiance to the Sovereign who is unelected. But technically, only the Navy and Air Force are historically honour bound to the crown. The Army, is in theory supposed to be loyal to parliament. Hence why the Air Force and Navy have the Prefix “Royal” and the Army does not. It is simply referred to as the British Army.
The biggest difference between the UK and USA as regards separation of powers is in the UK a party forms the government if it can command a majority in the House of Commons and the the prime minister is themselves an ordinary elected member of the House of Commons. The fact the government by definition commands a majority in the House of Commons means there is much less chance of their legislative programme being blocked, although that depends on how big their majority is. If they have a majority over all other parties in the House of Commons of 100 MPs, say, they can do virtually what they like. If, however, their majority is only one MPs then they need to spend more time persuading, cajoling, etc. The govt. can still have its programme blocked by the second chamber, the House of Lords, but two things might prevent that. First, under the Salisbury Convention the Lords promises not to block things that was in the government's manifest when it got elected in. Second, by exception the House of Commons can use the rarely used Parliament Act 2010 to ensure when the Commons and Lords are contradicting, over important issues the Lords can delay things for only one year.
We work a lot by "gentleman's agreement" generally understood rules and guidelines, publicly acceptable codes of conduct. It makes for a fluid adoption of new laws. Unlike the states where dispute 40,000 gun deaths and 50,000 gun injuries per year, you can't change the law without a total breakdown of the constitution. Our systems meant that, when a dozen school kids were shot and killed,we could tighten regulations to try and stop it happening again.
Basically if a law is considered a "constitutional law" you can't just make a new law that contradicts the old law. You have to repeal the old law and actively replace it.
The US is not quite as much a clean slate as you might think. It is actually largely based on what the UK was at the time, except with an elected king and an elected house of lords (Senate).... It may not appear as obvious today as the UK has moved on significantly since then, as the monarchs powers are now mostly symbolic, while the POTUS remains very powerful.
Yes, you did understand the manifesto aspect, and the US would probably be better if they worked on that principal too.
None of the so called ‘constitutional statutes’ are really safe from repeal since Brexit. Whilst members of the EU the U.K. maintained a different constitutional arrangement than usual. Since leaving, full sovereignty of Parliament has been restored. Parliament can pass any law which both the House of Lords and House of Commons vote for, signed off by the monarch.
Yes, you got it right with the manifesto and the Salisbury law. In Australia we don't have a Salisbery law, but we have the idea of a winning party having a 'Mandate" to pass the laws that they promised they would pass in the election campaign. So if the Labor Party promises they will bring in a Carbon Tax, and wins government, then no sneaky deals in the Upper House should be made to stop the Carbon Tax. However, at the next election the Liberal National Party coalition could promise to repeal the new Carbon Tax. If they win, they have a mandate to get rid of the Carbon Tax.
In Australia we got universal health care over 3 elections. First Labor created it in 1973 or so. Then the Liberals said it was too expensive, it should go, and they won the next election and got rid of universal health care. Then Labour went to the NEXT election saying: No really, universal healthcare was really really good, and benefited Australia more than it cost. We should bring it back. And Labor won in a landslide, because most people missed having universal healthcare after they had had a taste of what it was like. The landslide win was so big, that the conservatives in Australia have not dared to propose we get rid of it again. However they do habitually cut its budget when they get into power.
In York, the law states that it is legal to shoot a Scotsman with a crossbow upon seeing one, except for on Sundays. However, any Scotsman caught drunk or with a weapon can still be shot on a Sunday, Also in Chester, it is technically ok to shoot a Welshman after midnight on Sunday with a crossbow, as long as it's in the city walls. These laws hundreds of years old but still "on the books" How ever, you would still get done under newer laws that have superceed them and are "Implied" they have never been "Expressly" repealed, or is it vice verca it's confusing me too.
It's very simple once you get the concept of implicit/explicit. Imagine a normal law that says : corporate tax is 15% for all companies and then a new law is voted by the parliament that increase the corporate tax which is 20% now. Without even having to repeal the old law, it's the new law that applies. The old law was implicitly removed.
From what I understand from this video, a statute law can't be removed like that. You can't pass a new law that contradicts it. You need to explicitly/expressly repeal the statute law before passing a new law that isn't compatible with this old law.
Pass a new law that contradict an older one => the new law is applied and not the old one => the older law has been implicitly repealed because you didn't repeal it directly but the effect is the same.
Repealing a law = explicitly/expressly repealed.
In fact, removing/changing a statute law requires a step more than the normal law : you need the parliament to do a vote to remove this law before passing the new one. That's the only thing you need to remember.
i sincerely feel for you. the graphics in this 'thing' are just like someone turning up a series of 'cards', then rambling on in a one dimentional monologue. Meanwhile you are trying desperately to relate it to what you know, and not 'getting' (like many people in the UK) what all those unelected people (lords & ladies) are doing with the power to block everything an elected government decides. ...
Wud be like USA showing respect for native American law when planning.... Which ye isn't a thing.
Sorry but you aint got what it takes to do this.....stopping, re-winding and constant talking. See how "Reacting To My Roots" makes his vids.
My knowledge of English Law is to A level, and I found the video a brilliant refresher.
I so wish that you could have had someone available to answer your questions as you proceeded, as so much required a grasp of what went before.
While I am in no way a legal pr constitutional authority, and admit to being unable to give a definitive answer in so many situations, reading some of the comments it is clear to me that some of the posters are of the 'I think therefore it is' persuasion giving their opinions far more validity than any contradictory facts.
Your not going to understand this in a few minutes, I find it confusing.
Stop and rewind as much as you like it's going to make it worse.
Good luck trying though.
This may be a video you should watch first and just offer opinions ehen you understand it.
If you think of repealing laws like decorating a house.
Explicit repeal is steaming the old wallpaper and stripping it off before putting the new wallpaper up.
Implicit repeal is putting the new wallpaper on top of the old. The old stuff is still there, but it's covered and doesn't matter any more
Simply take away the basic fact that there isn't a written Constitution, unlike the US one. What we have is not written in stone, and therefore can allow for flexibility (as well as muddle!).
Implicit repeal is just a new law overriding an old one. If the government passed a law that everyone had to drink a litre of apple juice on sunday, then passed one after that made apple juice illegal, the later law is the one that is enforced. Constitutional laws cannot be repealed in this way and have to be repealed via the passing of a statute law repeal bill.
A better example of common law is when is Somerset vs Stewart. A slave was brought to England with his master and escaped, when he was caught the owner wished to take him back to Jamaica to be sold. A judge ruled that there was no basis in English law for enslaving people, so any slave that set foot on English soil became free at that moment. This then became common law as the judgement set a precedent.
12:20 imagine what it would be like in the USA if the senate was not elected. The House of Representatives would have more legitimacy and authority, so the Senate would agree not to vote against things which have been passed by the House.
Implicitly repealed = a new law overrides an old law either in part or full meaning new laws take precedence over the old law, i.e. That the parts of the old law are effectively repealed while the new law is in effect.
Explicitly repealed = the old law has been removed by action of parliament with or without a new being made to replace it.
What they are saying is that if a law if judged to have a fundamental effect on people and their relationship to the state (and I presume between bodies within the state) then you have to actively get rid of the old law before you can have a new one which is harder to do and requires more scrutiny then just making a new law that overrides the old one.
You say we tweak as we go, which is true, but you have countless amendments. So I’d say your constitution is more ‘under threat’ than ours...
EU law is considered superior to national law. Laws passed by the EU have to be adopted without revision by members.
The factortame case would no longer apply since leaving the EU.
For the implicitly removed or repealed - it means they actually don't remove/ repeal the law, they simply ignore it and take notice of the new one. Maybe like London taxis needing to carry a bale of hay
As a law student, hearing Metric Martyrs and Factortame actually gave me flashbacks to studying EU law 😭
If u want benifit from the EU law by allowing easy access to bissness in EU UK has to allow the same
7:20 I don’t understand that bit either. He’s not explaining it well.
Amazing how Jacks Voice has changed over the year or so
Er...the UK doesn't have a Constitution...
TLDR is an awful source for information.
It's VERY COMPLICATED.
Sounds like liz truss government
We had to listen to the EU on lots of regulations and laws
Countries with a fixed constitution such as the US are fixed into the period and ideals at the time it was written. Luckily the 18th century was not a bad time to fix a constitution. If Britain had a fixed constitution we would be trapped in the Dark Ages. Love your intelligent questions and deep thinking.
Okay, that's total BS. Every explicit constitution comes with a way of altering it. In the US it's amendments, in The Netherlands it's changes to the text.
I love it how they called Israel Isreal :D
It's not worth the hastle to be honest 😂
The last bit will be the king defence of law as it his laws
Cabinet be the executive in a sense.
The uk has the judiciary (Supreme Court), legislative (House of Commons & House of Lords) and executive (the prime minister and government, and the king who needs to sign all acts of parliament before they can become a law)
I agree but the difference between the US and the UK is that the three branches of government overlap each other far more in the UK than the US.
Until 2005 when the UK Supreme Court was established, the highest court in the land was the House of Lords - an overlap between the judiciary and the legislature. The speaker of the House of Lords was the Lord Chancellor, the head of the judiciary.
The executive in the UK (the Government and the sovereign) is a subset of the legislature (Parliament): there are no outsiders allowed.
@@MrBulky992 Yes, it’s interesting you mention the Lord Chancellor. He was a Cabinet member (in the Executive), thus by convention he was an MP (in the Legislature) and sat as a judge (in the Judiciary). Indeed, the current Lord Chancellor is in two branches, and is responsible for the smooth running of the third. The lines are very blurry indeed!
@@evantighe696 Yes, you are right! The Lord Chancellor was a member of all three "arms of government": the executive (a member of the cabinet), the judiciary and the legislature.
He was also allowed to be a member of the House of Commons (MP) and sit in both houses but, after 1587, none ever were: from then until 2005, he was always a full member of the House of Lords where he acted as speaker too!
Nowadays, the Lord Chancellor can be an MP in the House of Commons rather than a Lord and invariably is. The Lord Chancellor no longer acts as speaker of the House of Lords (there is now a Lord Speaker) and is no longer head of the judiciary (that's now the Lord Chief Justice) and the most recent people in the post - which doubles with the cabinet post of Minister of Justice - have no legal training (those who do are allowed to wear the full-bottomed wig on state occasions).
So, in summary, the Lord Chancellor is now a member of the executive (in the cabinet) and the legislature (House of Commons usually) but no longer of the judiciary.
@@evantighe696 One other thing about the Lord Chancellor: he/she is Lord Chancellor of Great Britain and not of the UK.
The post in Scotland was abolished in 1707 and the Lord Chancellor of England became the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain.
In 1801, unlike with Scotland, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland remained in post until 1922 and those responsibilities are now exercised by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
The most interesting Convention, recently receiving attention, was the Lascelles Principles: that set out the circumstances whereby the Monarch could refuse the Dissolution of Parliament after a request by the Prime Minister.
It has long been suggested that Margaret Thatcher attempted to keep her position, in 1990, by threatening a general election and jeopardising the marginal seats of her rebellious backbenchers but for some reason the Queen refused to agree; the Monarch is supposed to follow the considered advice of their ministers, by long standing convention.
However, in certain circumstances their Majesties can refuse the Prime Minister's advice/request in accordance with the Lascelles Convention.
The convention lays out the argument for refusing the PM:
1. If the existing Parliament is still "vital, viable, and capable of doing its job",
2. If a general election would be "detrimental to the national economy", and
3. If the sovereign could "rely on finding another prime minister who could govern for a reasonable period with a working majority in the House of Commons".
When the Queen refused in accordance with these principles Margaret Thatcher lost her power to threaten her enemies with possibly losing their seats, and was ousted.
So the whole explicit, implicit thing, it's kinda like this:
Imagine I'm the government, and I pass the Sunday Shopping Act, which bans shops from opening on Sundays.
After the election, the government passes a new Retail Regulations Act, which covers a lot of things, including that shops can be open 24 hours.
Now even though it hasn't mentioned shopping on Sunday, obviously that old law can't still be enforceable if shops can be open whenever they want. The Sunday Shopping Act has therefore been implicitly repealed. It's still in the law book, but newer laws mean it's been overruled.
If the new government instead passed a Sunday Shopping (Repeal) Act, then the new law specifically states the old law has been removed in exact words. It has been explicitly repealed.
Hope that helps 🙂
Implicitly repeales means in this case that law is repealed by a new lawthat contradicts it, therefore new law makes old one invalid. Explicitly repealed means it was repealed by a specific resolution to repeal this law/act.
Connor, I have a feeling you do not understand what exactly is a constitution. Constitution, is sometimes called a fundamental law, and it describes basically how government works and functions. US constitution blends its role with a bill of rights so it may be confusing. In principle, constitution describes what system of governance country has.
9:48 Clean slate? Come on, thats borderline racist.
11:04 A Law that has no punishment for breaking it might still be there for legality's sake. Its existence might invalidate any acts commited with violation of such law. Example: Passing a bill in violation of law might bear no punishment, but such bill might be stricken down as null and void due to being passed in violation of law.
Implicit v Explicit : An act would be IMPLICETLY repealed if it covered the same area as a previous act (eg an update to the Tax Code), in that case the previous act does not need to be repealed on its own, the new act IMPLICETLY repeals (overrides) it. In the example given, The UK Govt could not just pass a new Scotland Act and amend the powers of the Scottish Government (a Devolved Administration) because it has Constitutional Implications. The previous Scotland act MUST be EXPLICETLY repealed to allow any changes or a new Act . Hope that helps!
On the other side you have a very strong constitution in the US. Or so its seamed until Trump lost tje election and everyone could se how the US almost went through a coup. So what system is the best is hard to know. And also respect that democracy must be upheld by heart (culture) and not only by law
Magna Carta.
I see it as good and bad, good that it means we can be very adaptable and quickly too, bad because theres nothing in place telling our politicion's not to do something. Meaning we can get certain corrupt politicions in pushing for corrupt laws.
Don’t fret, watching this took my head a little while too. As a terrible analogy…
If there’s a law that says “women are men’s property” but a new law states that “all people are free individuals” then this new law overrules the last rule so whilst technically it’s still in effect, the law that states people are free overrides it so that old law can’t be used.
Many laws are about the relationship between people, not between people and the state. Theft or murder, or what rights you have in your job, or when you buy something for example.
English is hard and I’m English don’t worry about it😉🤣
To enter the EU you need 3 seperate branches of government.
It's why Poland has gotten into trouble with the EU as the legislative branch is messing with the judicial one. I haven't looked much into it but that's the summary I've heard.
From a Belgian perspective the US barely has those 3 seperate branches. Things like the supreme court being a tad uncomfortably close connected to the senate. Which is causing a lot of trust issues between the American public and today's supreme court.
Late 1700's wasn't exactly a time we had most of this stuff figured out. Again as a Belgian I'm especially uncomfortable with how much power the US president has been able to accumulate in recent decades.
A law that was implicitely repealed was that women in Paris were unable to wear pants except when horse riding(simplified but whatever). This was repealed somewhere after the 2000's(edit: looked it up, repealed in 2013 as a bit of a publicity stunt so that minister could come out with a win that was at the end of the day useless) though of course unnecessarily so. It was overruled by new laws. It was implicitely repealed.
Poland is 100% correct in resisting the repugnant EU's contrived interferences. Thahk goodness we British decided to get away from the loathsome org.
Dude, if you want to come over and need a place to stay, you can. let me know
guy loves distracting himself
Honestly the fact you all still speak English says it all!
Basically joining the EU requires the country to put in its own laws (generally its constitution) that where applicable per the agreements, that EU law supersedes other laws in that country. This is limited to areas where the EU has been delegated that authority by that country. The country is still sovereign and can, should it decide, to repeal the laws that delegate that authority to the EU. This was very close in the case of Brexit, where many of the conservatives were pushing for basically what would be a nuclear option in terms of international agreements.
For the American audience it is similar to state and federal law. Each state can create their own laws which are different to other states and have their own Supreme Court. But the federal Supreme Court has jurisdiction over all 50 states and their rulings supersede state rulings. The EU court functions in a similar way
Any law the high court deems constitutional has to be expressly repealed ie. Parliament has to pass an act destroying this law to get it off the books. Non constitutional laws can simply be over ruled by newer laws without being repealed. This is part of the function of the house of Lords to review any new law to ensure it doesn't infringe on any constitutional laws.
I respectfully say you are incorrect.
Technically no law is ‘constitutional’. Parliament is sovereign. Parliament cannot be compelled by the Supreme Court (not the high court) to repeal a statute. The Supreme Court of the U.K. can rule a statute incompatible with the Human Rights Act, but cannot strike down an Act of Parliament/Statute. Neither can the court compel parliament to expressly repeal a Statute.
Ultimately, the judiciary does no more, or less, under the Supreme Court Act 1998, than carry out its constitutional function of interpreting and applying the law enacted by Parliament. They only have such power as Parliament gave them in the Human Rights Act 1998. Parliament can take these powers away by simply passing a new Act of Parliament. The doctrine of implied repeal would apply regardless of the constitutional nature of the statute.