Constitution Helps The Protect Law Assignment

Running head: PUBLIC AND EU LAW
Public and EU Law
Name of the Students
Name of the University
Authors Note

PUBLIC AND EU LAW1
Introduction
A constitution of a country is considered to be the heart of that country. It has been
observed that an entire country is governed by the constitution of that country. A constitution
deals with many aspects, for instance rule of law, codification, parliamentary power and human
rights. Constitution helps to protect the rights of the citizens by providing certain fundamental
rights. Similarly, in order to maintain the law and order of a country some fundamental duties are
also provided by the constitution which must be followed by the citizens. If anybody violates or
tries to violate the fundamental rights or duties that person must be punished under the
provisions of the constitution. Almost all constitutions deal with the aspect of human rights
because it is a matter of international importance. Intending to protect the rights of the
individuals separate law has been enacted by several countries, such as the Human Rights Act,
1998 has been enacted in UK to protect the rights of the people of UK1. This paper mainly
focuses on the critical analysis of human rights of the UK’s Constitution with the US’s
Constitution. While discussing the same this paper also sheds light on the aspects of human
rights and implementation of it into the legislation of both the jurisdictions, such as Bill of
Rights, Treaties, enactment of several rights.
Discussion
Before discussing the difference between the UK and the US Constitution in relation to
the aspect of human rights implementation, it is vital to know the nature and features of both the
Constitutions. The first and foremost nature of the Constitution of UK’s is that, this constitution
is not a written constitution. Many authors are of the view that the UK’s Constitution is not
written because UK does not follow a single document to maintain the law and order of the state.
1 Landman, Todd. Protecting human rights: A comparative study. (Georgetown University Press, 2005).

PUBLIC AND EU LAW2
The Parliament passes law by using the power of the Crown that cannot be challenged by
anyone. On the other hand, in this respect it cannot be said that the US Constitution could be
more different in comparison to the UK Constitution. It is a solitary, formal and comparatively
short document which has turn out to be anchored in the past 230 years of the US political life2.
Many authors are of the view that these comparison is very obvious, therefore it is important to
trace out the implications of this difference, beyond this evident contrast.
The foremost implication of the codified or un-codified Constitution and possibly the
utmost strong point of the US Constitution is related to the rights of the individual. As the United
States has a codified Constitution, therefore it has a codified and incorporated set of rights that
all American citizens have. Human rights in the U.S. include a number of rights lawfully secured
by the U.S. Constitution, including revisions, state constitutions, imposed by treaties and
ordinary international law, statutory laws adopted by Congress, and formal referendums and
inventiveness of the American citizens. U.S. federal courts have authority over the laws of
international human rights because it is considered to be a part of the U.S. law. A report stated
that the United States got 86 points out of 100 on the basis of the human freedom and rights both
civil and political under the Freedom of World ranking. The U.S. ranked 38th under CIRI Human
Rights Data Project on the basis of human rights3.
In comparison, a set of codified rights is not present in the UK Constitution. In U.K.,
human rights include various fundamental rights of persons. Human rights are an essential part
of the U.K. Constitution and originated from common law and certain statutes such as Magna
Carta, the Bill of Rights, 1689 and the Human Rights Act 1998, Council of Europe membership
and international law. The concept of written human rights is new but these rights have been
2 Wiener, Antje. The invisible constitution of politics. Vol. 4. Cambridge: (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
3 Steiner, Henry J., Philip Alston, and Ryan Goodman. International human rights in context: law, politics, morals:
text and materials. (Oxford University Press, USA, 2008).