Three Main Organs of Government

Three Main Organs of Government

The British Government functions through three bodies:

1) Legislature

2) Executive

3) Judiciary

In America all three branches are systematically split between the

Executive (the president), the legislative (Congress) and the

Judiciary (Supreme Court).

The Legislature:

Composition

The British Legislature consists of two ‘Houses’ of Parliament. This

bicameral structure is dived into an elected ‘lower’ chamber called

the House of Commons and an unelected ‘upper’ chamber called the House

of Commons and an elected upper chamber called the House of Lords.

The House of Commons is directly elected by the people on the basis of

single member constituencies.

The House of Lords consists of a mixture of hereditary peers, life

peers, bishops and law Lords.

The last two categories are the Church of England bishops who by law

are given automatic representation as leaders of the country’s

official established church and senior justices who have traditionally

been given seats in the Lords so that when necessary hear cases

brought to the Lord as the final court of appeal.

The Role and Function of Legislature.

The legislature is responsible under the constitution for making

policy, it is sovereign.

In the theory, parliament decides what policies to follow and then

passes legislation allowing those policies to follow and then passes

legislation allowing those policies to be put into effect.

The Executive:

Composition:

The Executive comprises of:

The Prime Minister together with all the other ministers both senior

and junior.

The civil service and all other arms of these bodies which put

parliamentary policy into force or which oversee the progress of

Government activities.

The Role and Function of Executive:

The prime minister presides over the Cabinet and selects the other

Cabinet members who join him to form the government that is part of

the functioning executive. Acting through the Cabinet and in the name

of the monarch, the prime minister exercises all of the theoretical