The British Constitution

... A constitution is a set of rules and principles on how a country is governed. Competition for political power in most countries is fierce, so rules are needed to control the competition for power to ensure it takes place within satisfactory limits. The British Constitution is unwritten; there is no single codified document. Unlike the Constitution of the United States of America, which is written or codified. Professor KC Wheare defines the constitution of a state as: ...the whole system of a government of a country, the collection of rules, which establish and regulate or govern the government. (Barnett, P7) An older definition, that of Thomas Paine, reveals a more complex set of ideas: A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is a power without right...A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government; and a government is

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