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This chapter examines the theory of the British constitution, providing a definition of constitution and describing what theories about the constitution have been held in Britain. It explains that one interpretation of the constitution in Britain is the judicial one, of the large and indeterminate number of statutes and secondary legislation that make up the legal elements in the constitution. The chapter suggests that, in some respects, the conventional rules which regulate certain areas of governmental behaviour have become more crystallised and less debatable in recent years with the promulgation and general acceptance of codes of practice.

Commonsense intuition seems to recognize a distinction between two quite different sorts of rules governing behavior, namely moral rules and conventional rules. Prototypical examples of moral rules include those prohibiting killing or injuring other people, stealing their property, or breaking promises. Prototypical examples of conventional rules include those prohibiting wearing gender-inappropriate clothing (e.g., men wearing dresses), licking one’s plate at the dinner table, and talking in a classroom when one has not been called on by the teacher. Philosophers approaching this issue from many different perspectives have tried to specify the features that a rule must have if it is to count as moral or conventional, though no consensus has emerged. Starting in the mid-1970s, however, a number of psychologists, following the lead of Elliott Turiel, have offered characterizations of the distinction between moral and conventional rules, and have gone on to argue that the distinction is both psychologically real and psychologically important. This chapter discusses the core features of moral and conventional rules. It then presents an experimental paradigm to make the case that the moral/conventional distinction characterized in this way is both psychologically real and psychologically important. This is followed by a study on whether there are harmful transgressions that do not evoke the signature moral responses.

The Constitution includes a large number of non-legal conventional rules with most of them dealing with responsibilities of the major organs and officers of government and with the relations between them. Within the United Kingdom, the conventions provide a framework of political accountability. In this chapter, the author stipulates that within the United Kingdom, recent changes in the machinery of government, and developments in party and electoral politics have raised questions about the working of particular conventions. This in turn, has led to political controversies and disputes amongst lawyers and political scientists.

This chapter focuses on constitutional law and describes the disputes which merged into a more general question about the eligibility of constitutional law to count as positive law. First, it describes John Austin's characterization of constitutional law. Austin held that laws were commands issued by sovereign bodies, and it was for him that constitutional laws which defined the sovereign body could not be positive laws pure and simple. It then discusses Maitland's criticisms of Austin's notion of the English Sovereign. Finally, it describes Dicey's doctrine on constitutional law and its critics. Dicey's thesis was that constitutional law consists only in those rules affecting the structure and powers of government which are enforceable in courts of law. This exclusion of what he described as ‘conventional rules’ has been strongly criticized by a number of writers such as Ivor Jennings and Dr. A. L. Goodhart.