h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One of my A-levels was in law and I thought I understood something about this. (mind you it'll be a few years out of date by now)

Can I just ask what is it your revising for and would you like to talk about it? 'cos it's not often I can discuss our constitution (such as it is) with someone else.

Wow, A-level law? Cool. Mine's for A-level politics.
Actually the constitution is the bit I understand least of the whole thing. My notes say something like "Britain has a constitution but it doesn't actually exist" and then moves on to why there should be one, even though there is one, even though there really isn't. So anything you know about it would be very useful, because I'm slightly confused by it all.
Thank you for your interest!
Now I had better get back to judicial inquiries...

hmmm.

Right as I recall Britain has no codified constiution - that is a document which lists all the elements of control that make up the state and the rights and responsiblities appertaining to citizens of that state i.e laws. In the US you can have a copy of the constituion in paperback. the so-called "unwritten" constitution is one that is a mixture of practice, and written law.

The issue about whether the UK has a constitution or not is often framed as one about preserving flexability - should a constitution freeze a scoiety into a binding state or should a constituion be fleixible and adpative and how best to achieve that.

To the the issue of flexability then; in the UK there is a mixture of Common Law, Precedent and Statute.

Of these statute (the laws passed in parliamanet by the democraticly elected majority government) are the most binding and they define essentially what is criminal (and civil) diobedience. They do not prescribe minimum penalties but rather maximum tarriffs i.e "a maximum of 5 years for X."

This means that a judge in a particular case is able to match the requirements of that case in terms of brutality or mercy or mitigation to come up with a sentence which is Just, in context.
(There are exceptions to this however like crimes of murder which carry an automatic - hence minimum - life sentence because of the level of intent in causing death. Which is a whole other debate in itself. The lesser crime of manslaughter covers death by recklessness.)
Remember for some but not all cases, there is a jury who decide the verdict and the judge decides the length and nature of the sentence. Crimes tried in lower courts like circuit and magistrate do not have a jury and recent changes to the law mean that not all previously considered for jury trials are tried by juries either.

Case law decides precedent - that is how to interpret the statute law in court cases.

Common law practice is what everyone does until either precedent or statue come along and define what is and isn't legal.

For instance slipping and breaking your ankle on a wet floor; a shop might have refused to pay compensation. A legal case (in this case civil) where sueing for damages successfully might have set a precdent, which would mean that in reference to past cases when making their decisions future courts with similar cases would act in accordance with precedent and also award damages.
Eventually the Government passes a Health and Safety act, saying words to the effect of "it is the responsibilty of all employers and places where the public traverse to ensure that no harm comes to them" or something.
So to avoid falling foul of the legislation shops, and knowing that precedent is against them, shops now have yellow cones "saying slippery - wet floor." and they have given the public fair warning that there is an increased danger of slipping.

I'm making that sequence of events up to illustrate my point - it's not an actual example of statute law coming into practice to resolve a precedent.
You'd need to find one of your own. A better example of presedent might be the case of R Vs R (where the crown tried itself) to clear up a the law regarding martitial rape and made rape within marriage a crime - when it was not before considered so.
Another better example might be Donoghue V Stevenson (which more like the example above.) This famously founded the principle in civil law of acting negligently and provided for redress when no legal contract existed between third party consumers of products (manufactuer -> shop -> consumer). Hithertoo a binding contract was the only way to hold another party to account.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donoghue_v._Stevenson (also known informally as "the case of the snail in the bottle")

So I've covered the judicairy and the legislature, the last of the trumvirate who make up the constitutional bodies is The Executive.
This is the government and the Cabinet. Their function is to govern and create law based (allegedly) on their election manifestso. It is they who decide which poicies to bring to the legislature (parliament) to make legislation in regard to disaster or accident etc and to try and these enact as laws.

Via Government departments such as The Home Office (responsible for amongst other thing,s The Police and Immigration) or The Department for Education and Skills (responsible for schools higher education policy etc) the laws already passed are administered. i.e a school failing to keep standards receives a visit from OFSTED a government regulatory body and are forced to amke improvements.) That kind of operation and oversight is co-ordinated from the exectutive.

It's worth your finding out the process by which laws are passed and also the functions of the different bodies includign the different yypes of courts (i.e the House of Lords is both the upper chamber of the legislature AND an Appeals Court where Court Cases under appeal are heard before going to Europe for a final binding decision.)

You might find some useful information on here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/asguru/generalstudies/society/27constitution/index.shtml

Good luck with your exams.

Wow, thanks.
Sadly I wasn't on here to get that until after my politics exam, but luckily the constitution didn't come up. It was on the independence of the judiciary (I wrote loads about the Lord Chancellor and then remembered that he's given up his job as head of the judiciary so it doesn't count any more) and the House of Lords as part of the legislature (I waffled about the religious hatred bill for three pages). And then we had an awful question on the politics of Northern Ireland, which is so darn confusing no-one understood it, and we live here.
But thanks for all the stuff on the constitution, it was really interesting. I want to do law at uni so I have to enjoy things like that.