The Unwritten Constitution
Why the UK has no single written constitutional document, how conventions and statutes substitute for one, and whether this flexibility is a strength or a vulnerability.
Sources of the UK Constitution
The UK is one of only three democracies without a single codified constitutional document (the others are Israel and New Zealand). Instead, the UK constitution is found in multiple sources: Acts of Parliament (like the Magna Carta of 1215, the Bill of Rights of 1689, and the Human Rights Act 1998), common law developed through court decisions, constitutional conventions (unwritten rules observed by political custom), and authoritative texts like Erskine May's parliamentary procedure guide.
The absence of a single document does not mean the UK has no constitution. It means the constitution is distributed across hundreds of sources, many of them centuries old, and held together by a political culture that respects precedent and convention. An ordinary Act of Parliament can change the constitution, unlike in the US where amendment requires a supermajority process. This makes the UK constitution extraordinarily flexible but also extraordinarily dependent on good faith.