Exploring the Depth of Constitutionalism

A constitution is often defined as the main body of rules either written or unwritten, which describes the government and its method of operation. Besides a constitution just being a set of rules which governs an organisation, it goes into much deeper depth. According to Thomas Paine, he reveals that a constitution is something that is pre-existing to a government, giving legitimacy and defining powers under which a government may act. Due to Britain’s unwritten constitution, there was a sense of ambiguity in the word and whether if there was a constitution at all. Ironically, United Kingdom was once described as ‘the mother country or modern constitutionalism’. This goes to show that constitutionalism here does not require the existence

Friedrich Hayek claims that ‘Since Johne Locke, history of constitutionalism is that struggle against the positive conception of sovereignty and the conception of the supreme state’. Paradoxically, Maurice Vile argues that ‘the history of western constitutionalism is the constant pressure to maintain the ultimate authority of he legislature’. However, these two contrasting statement can balance each other as constitutionalism implies both ultimate authorities of the legislature and the struggle against supremacy. The concept of constitutionalism is a huge umbrella which includes various different meanings and nature of the concept which is commonly mistaken by the public. This could be due to the structure and formation of such theory. Constitutionalism is often widely used as a scope to distinct constitutional concepts such as democracy, parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law and separation of powers. In addition, it also includes the idea of legality, fundamental rights and the avoidance of autocratic power. Nevertheless, it implies more than just the idea of ‘legality’ which requires official conduct to be uniform with the pre-fixed legal rules. In lay-man terms, the logic behind constitutionalism is to prevent any abuse of power by the state institutions. Even if a power is exercised on legal authority, that fact is not determinative of whether or not that act was constitutional. There are various implication to evaluate the accuracy of this statement in relation to the British