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Parliamentary sovereignty or Parliamentary supremacy is the concept in British constitutional law that a parliament has sovereignty. This means it is supreme to all other governmental institutions including the monarch and the courts, and may change or repeal any legislation passed by previous parliaments with a majority. (Theoretically, the monarch is a part of the Crown in Parliament.)The principle of parliamentary sovereignty was established over the 17th and 18th centuries during which time parliament asserted the right to name and depose a monarch.
In the United Kingdom, there are three features of parliamentary sovereignty:
- Parliament can make law in any area
- No Parliament can bind its successor (a Parliament cannot pass a law that cannot be changed or reversed by a future Parliament)
- No body except Parliament can change or reverse a law passed by Parliament.
Parliamentary sovereignty prevents judicial review of local domestic law. However in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the idea of parliamentary supremacy underwent erosion in practice from three main directions:
- The first is the devolution of power to regional assemblies in Scotland ( Scottish Parliament), Wales ( Welsh Assembly) and Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland is the smallest of the Home Nations of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland lies in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It covers 14,139 square kilometres (5,459 square miles), and has a populati ( Northern Ireland AssemblyThe Northern Ireland Assembly is a 108-member legislative body for Northern Ireland that sits at Stormont with powers devolved to it from the Westminster parliament. It is created as a power sharing body, so that every party is represented in the executiv).
- The second erosion has been in connection with institutions of the European UnionFor other uses, see EU (disambiguation). The European Union or EU is a supranational organisation of 25 European states. It was established with that name by the Treaty on European Union (commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty) in 1992 but many aspects o, in particular the European Court of JusticeThe ECJ should not be mistaken for the European Court of Human Rights, a Council of Europe institution. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is the 'Court of Justice of the European Communities', i. the court of the European Union (EU). It is based in Luxe which asserts the power to exercise judicial reviewJudicial review is the power of a court to review a law or an official act of a government employee or agent; for example, although the basis is different in different countries, as unconstitutional or violating of basic principles of justice. In many jur over UK law. In this situation, an adverse finding by the Court that a UK law is inconsistent with the Treaties automatically annuls the law, since the European Communities Act provides that European Community law is supreme in the United Kingdom. The first example of this was the Factortame caseThe Factortame case was a landmark constitutional case in the United Kingdom, which confirmed the supremacy of European Union law over UK law. The case first came to prominence when in the UK courts, a Spanish fishing company called Factortame appealed ag.
- The third erosion has been in connection with the European Convention on Human Rights and the incorporation by the Human Rights Act 1998 of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law. The European Court of Human Rights can find acts of the UK government (including those done pursuant to an Act of the British Parliament) to be in violation of the Convention. However, decisions by the ECHR (unlike decisions by the ECJ) does not automatically annul the law; the Government must introduce a bill into Parliament to implement the ECHR's decisions. Acting under the Human Rights Act, British courts can declare Acts of Parliament to be in violation of the Convention; this power, like that of the European Court of Human Rights, does not automatically annul the law. However, unlike the ECHR, the British Courts have a formal procedure for the review of Acts (technically the ECHR reviews acts done by the member state, which can include both legislation but also other government actions, but the two are not distinguished), resulting in a Declaration of Incompatibility. The Declaration of Incompatibility does not annul the law, but enables the Government to use an accelerated procedure to enact a bill to repeal it.
- Another more minor area is the increasing use of referendums which take away power from Parliament, as in reality, the decision whether to pass law is made by the electorate, not Parliament. However, Parliament could still reverse decisions made by referendums, but this seems unlikely to ever happen.
However, in each case, the laws have been structured so that there is no theoretical erosion of Parliamentary supremacy. Parliament has the power to abolish or overrule any of the devolved legislatures at its pleasure, although it would be highly unlikely to do so. The European and British Courts have the authority to declare incompatibility or to annul a law only because of an Act of Parliament, the European Communities Act 1972 which can be repealed by Parliament. Thus, theoretically, Parliament remains almost entirely sovereign. (The qualifier "almost" is provided because in the 1920s, after years of dispute, Parliament finally agreed that it does not have sovereignty over the Church of Scotland, the established church in Scotland.)
There is a concept in political science of 'legal' and 'political' sovereignty. It can be argued that legal sovereignty has not been lost, because Parliament still retains all its theoretical powers. However, as it is highly unlikely that the UK would repeal the European Communities Act and leave the EU, and it is equally unlikely the devolved legislature would be abolished, political sovereignty has been lost.
