Parliamentary sovereignty

Parliamentary sovereignty (also called parliamentary supremacy or legislative supremacy) is a concept in the constitutional law of some parliamentary democracies. It holds that the legislative body has absolute sovereignty, and is supreme over all other government institutions, including executive or judicial bodies. It also holds that the legislative body may change or repeal any previous legislation, and so it is not bound by written law (in some cases, even a constitution) or by precedent.

Parliamentary sovereignty may be contrasted with separation of powers, which limits the legislature's scope often to general law-making, and judicial review, where laws passed by the legislature may be declared invalid in certain circumstances.

Many states have sovereign legislatures, including the United Kingdom,Finland, the Netherlands,New Zealand,Sweden,Barbados, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

Parliament means, in the mouth of a lawyer (though the word has often a different sense in conversation) The King, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons: these three bodies acting together may be aptly described as the "King in Parliament", and constitute Parliament. The principle of Parliamentary sovereignty means neither more nor less than this, namely that Parliament thus defined has, under the English constitution, the right to make or unmake any law whatever: and, further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament.

During the 17th century in England, a notion developed that Parliament (made up of the House of Lords and House of Commons) shared in sovereignty with the King, based on an entirely erroneous notion of the history of parliament. It was not until the changing of the Coronation Oath in the Coronation Oath Act 1688 as part of the Glorious Revolution that Parliament was recognised as part of the constitutional structure, with laws being considered to emanate from Parliament and not just the King. The Bill of Rights 1689 and Claim of Right Act 1689 were passed the following year which asserted certain rights of the Parliaments of England (which at the time included Wales) and Scotland and limited the powers of the monarch. Furthermore, in 1698 parliament created the Civil List, a financial arrangement that left the monarch reliant on parliament for income.

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