UK Constitution (Re: US Constitution e-text?)

Mark Grant (mark@unicorn.com)
Sun, 20 Jul 1997 10:30:48 +0000


On Fri, 18 Jul 1997, Kevin Redman wrote:

> Does England have a constitution??

I think you mean Britain... and no, not really, though it has a hodgepodge
of laws which politicians like to refer to as a 'constitution'. There is a
'bill of rights' from 1689, but most of that's ignored by now; there was
no restriction on later laws restricting those rights. That's at

http://www.unicorn.com/lib/ukbor.html

Interesting to see which rights they considered valuable in those days,
compared to today. In a couple of cases (e.g. 'cruel and unusual
punishments') they seem to have been copied over into the US Bill of
Rights, but in that case the founders had enough sense to prohibit future
laws infringing on them.

Mark

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