1. What was the Curia Regis?

2. What was the original main function of Parliament?

3. How did government change in the 18^th century?

4. When was the franchise enlarged?

5. Has the power of Parliament been changed by special laws?

 

 

Britain. It is accepted constitutional theory that Parliament (the House of Commons and the House of Lords with the assent of the monarch) can do anything it wants to, including abolish itself. The interesting aspect of British government is that, despite the absence of restraints such as judicial review, acts which would be considered unconstitutional in the presence of a written constitution are attempted very rarely […].

The English constitution and the English common law grew up together, very gradually, more as the result of the accretion of custom than through deliberate, rational legislation by some 'sovereign' lawgiver. Parliament grew out of the Curia Regis, the King’s Council, in which the monarch originally consulted with the great magnates of the realm and later with commoners who represented the boroughs and the shires. Parliament was, and is, a place in which to debate specific issues of disagreement between, initially, the crown, on the one hand, and the Lords and Commons, on the other. The conflicts were settled in Parliament so that its original main function was that of a court – it was in fact known as 'the High Court of Parliament' as late as the 16^th century. […]

During the course of the 18^th century, effective government passed more and more into the hands of the king’s first minister and his cabinet, all of them members of one of the two houses of Parliament. Before this development, the king’s ministers depended upon their royal master’s confidence to continue in office. Henceforward they depended upon the confidence of the House of Lords and especially the House of Commons, which had to vote the money without which the king’s government could not be carried on. […]

Parliamentary factions were slowly consolidated into parliamentary parties, and these parties reached out for support into the population at large by means of the franchise, which was repeatedly enlarged in the course of the 19^th century and eventually extended to women and then to 18-year-old in the 20^th. […]

Relations between, and the relative powers of, the House of Lords and the House of Commons have been repeatedly redefined to the disadvantage of the House of Lords by Acts of Parliament, to such an extent that the Lords retain only a weak suspensory veto. All such fundamental constitutional changes have occurred either informally and without any kind of legislation at all or a result of the same legislative procedure employed to pass any other ordinary circumstantial bill. […]