How power is divided between executive, legislature and judiciary in the UK — and how that division survives without a codified constitution to enforce it.
Because the UK constitution is uncodified, the boundaries between the branches are policed by a patchwork of statute, case law and convention rather than a single document. This chapter starts with the doctrine itself and the three branches of the state, then examines the fusion of executive and legislature at Westminster and the judicial independence secured by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, before turning to parliamentary privilege and the enrolled Bill rule. It moves on to the legal limits on executive power — taxation, law-making and the prerogative — the control of delegated legislation, and judicial review with its three classic grounds of illegality, irrationality and procedural impropriety. It closes with the Human Rights Act 1998's careful balance between rights protection and parliamentary sovereignty, and the conventions of collective and individual ministerial responsibility that keep government accountable.
