Is Parliamentary Sovereignty Still Applicable Today As It Was Previous Essay

Is Parliamentary Sovereignty Still Applicable Today As It Was Previously - Essay Example For those who believe in parliamentary sovereignty, parliament has absolute power which is unlimited by any other arm of government and because of this supremacy, all the legislation passed by it cannot be challenged by any other authority. In fact, it has at times been stated that parliament is not limited in what laws it can pass and that all of those that are passed are binding to all the people within its jurisdiction. While in other countries which have the parliamentary system, the actions of parliament are restricted by written constitutions that govern how these parliaments can act, in Britain; this is not the case because there is no written constitution to provide the guidelines. Many have used this to justify the belief that parliament remains as supreme as it was a century ago and this is mainly because it is the one which can make its own guidelines towards its conduct. There has been some debate concerning whether parliament is independent of the other organs of state or whether it is supreme to them. Some writers have stated that parliamentary sovereignty is equivalent to the sovereignty of the state and that the two are the same thing (Newman 175). This idea has been hotly contested because of the opposing belief that parliament is just one of the organs of state and that although it has sovereignty in its own right; it is not supreme to the other organs. In fact, it is stated that the role of parliament is strictly restricted to the role of passing legislation and that it does not have the right to interfere in the functions of the other arms or organs of government. When considering the legislative powers attributed to the British parliament, it is difficult to define the extent to which these powers go and whether they can be limited or not. What can be best described is the fact that the lower house, or the House of Commons, has supremacy in almost all legislative activity in parliament. However, this does not mean that all legislation is passed solely by this house because most of the legislation tends to be passed through cooperation between both houses of parliament (Packman 1229).  Ã‚