Parliamentary Sovereignty

Parliament is positioned in the supremacy of any government and very ethically, it is the strongest parliamentary feelings in the political institution and as such the political scientists have made their active efforts to find out their sources of political powers. Some famous personalities like John Austin, Wilson, Hans Keelson and HLA Hart have always ransacked to find out the ways and means with which the source of power can be identified. In defining the conceptual factors of law, they realized only in the identification of sovereignty as the valid source of law.

In finding out the conceptual background, UK being historically a monarchical state always looked upon the King and the Queen as the source of ultimate power to maneuver the state. With the reduction of King’s prerogative powers there came a correlative rise in the sovereignty of Parliament. As an ultimate target to interpret the source of power, the King and the queen has been preferred as the main code of law which affixes some reduction of power rather than uniformity as envisaged in democratic government.

The classical definition of sovereignty offered from a constitutional law rather then jurisprudential perspective is that of A.V. Dicey [1885].Dicey drew a strict separation between legal and political sovereignty, where people hold political sovereignty, whilst legal sovereignty rests with the “Queen in Parliament”. And this doctrine is the main concept of the UK. While judges interpret law they always keep it in their mind that what was the intention of the parliament about those matter. According to Dicey Parliament is legally sovereign due to three basic rules:

1. Parliament is the supreme law making body and may enact laws on any subject matter.
2. No parliament is bound by its predecessor nor bind its successors.
3. No person or body, including a court of law may question the validity of Parliament’s enactment.

Dicey said that the Parliament is the supreme law making body and may legislate on any subject matter. In UK as there is no written constitution, parliamentary system is the main. For example-Septennial Act, 1715, this extended the life of parliament to seven years. Parliament may grant independence to dependant states as exemplelified by Zimbabwe Independence Act, 1979 and Nigeria Independence Act, 1960. Although general impact of law exemplified and utilized for the cause of the preservation of human rights.