jurisdiction. Such questions are now usually, though not universally, submitted to special tribunals known as administrative courts. The rules administered by these tribunals are laws, but they form a distinct and separate branch of the law from that applied by the ordinary courts. On the continent, therefore, a constitution may or may not be properly regarded as a law, but even if it be so regarded it is not of necessity enforced by any court. On the contrary, if an ordinary court is not suffered to pass upon the legality of the actions of a policeman, it would be hardly rational that it should pass upon the validity of an act of the national legislature; and it would be even more irrational to intrust any such power to the administrative courts which are under the influence of the executive branch of the government.[8:1]

The conception of a constitution as a law of superior obligation, which imposes legal restraints upon the action of the legislature, is really confined to a very few countries, chiefly to America and the English self-governing colonies.[8:2] In Europe it has no proper place, for whether a constitution in continental states be or be not regarded as a supreme law, no body of men has, as a rule, been intrusted with legal authority to enforce its provisions as against the legislature; and in England there is no law superior in obligation to an Act of Parliament. There can, indeed, be no doubt that the Acts of Union with Scotland and Ireland were intended to be, in part at least, forever binding, but as they created no authority with power either to enforce or to amend the Acts, the united Parliament assumed that, like its predecessors, it possessed unlimited sovereignty; and it has, in fact, altered material provisions in each of those statutes.[8:3]

The English Constitution—speaking, of course, of its form, not its content—differs, therefore, from those of most other European nations more widely in method of expression than in essential nature and legal effect. They have been created usually as a result of a movement to change fundamentally the political institutions of the country, and the new plan has naturally been embodied in a document; but since the Restoration England has never revised her frame of government as a whole, and hence has felt no need of codifying it. The national political institutions are to be found in statutes,[9:1] in customs which are enforced and developed by the courts and form a part of the Common Law, and in customs strictly so called which have no legal validity whatever and cannot be enforced at law. These last are very appropriately called by Professor Dicey the conventions of the constitution. The two chief peculiarities of the English Constitution are: first, that no laws are ear-marked as constitutional,—all laws can be changed by Parliament, and hence it is futile to attempt to draw a sharp line between those laws which do and those which do not form a part of the constitution;—second, the large part played by customary rules, which are carefully followed, but which are entirely devoid of legal sanction. Customs or conventions of this kind exist, and in the nature of things must to some extent exist, under all governments. In the United States where they might, perhaps, be least expected, they have, as already observed, transformed the presidential electors into a mere machine for registering the popular vote in the several states, and this is only the most striking of the instances that might be cited.[9:2] England is peculiar, not because it has such conventions, but because they are more abundant and all-pervasive than elsewhere. The most familiar of them is, of course, the rule that the King must act on the advice of his ministers, while they must resign or dissolve Parliament when they lose the confidence of the majority in the House of Commons.

It is impossible, however, to make a precise list of the conventions of the constitution, for they are constantly changing by a natural process of growth and decay; and while some of them are universally accepted, others are in a state of uncertainty. Hence one hears from time to time a member of the Opposition assert that some action of the government is unconstitutional, meaning that it is an unusual breach of a principle which in his opinion ought to be recognised as inviolable. It was said, for example, that the Parliament of 1900, having been elected on the issue of the South African war, was not justified in enacting measures of great importance on other subjects, but that a fresh mandate from the nation ought to be obtained by another general election. As claims of this kind are in dispute, those customs alone can safely be said to be a part of the constitution which are generally assumed to be outside the range of current political controversy.