Under William the Conqueror, advised by a royal council (Curia Regis), the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086, cataloguing all land and works to raise taxes. Only 12% of the population was free, while the feudal system turned the rest into serfs, slaves or Bordars and Cottars. [10] In 1190, Richard the Lionheart, who was more closely associated with the pope in Rome, joined the Third Crusade to invade the Holy Land, but at a high cost. Taxes levied by Richard I[11] and his successor King John to pay for the wars led to intense discontent, and the aristocracy forced the king to sign the Magna Carta in 1215. This was an obligation to hold an “ordinary lawyer” before any imposition, to hold courts in a fixed location, to hold trials under the law or before the colleagues of a defendant, to guarantee the free movement of persons for trade and to return common land. [12] The failure to join the Magna Carta led to the First Barons` War, and the popular legend of Robin Hood emerged: a returning crusader who stole from the rich to give to the poor. [13] The commitments to the common lands were soon recast in the Forest Charter of 1217, signed by Henry III at Saint-Paul. [14] These documents stipulated that the monarch, even with the apparent authority of God, was bound by the law, and this remains “the next approximation of an irresistible `fundamental law` that England ever had.” [15] Throughout the Middle Ages, the common land was a source of well-being for ordinary people, peasant workers, bound by a system of feudal control. In 1348, the Black Death struck England, killing about a third of the population. When the peasants lost their masters and there was a shortage of workers, wages went up. The king and parliament responded with the Workers` Statute of 1351 to freeze wage increases. This led to the peasant uprising of 1381, in which the rulers demanded an end to feudalism and kept everything together.
[16] Despite the violent repression of the revolt, slavery and serfdom collapsed,[17] but most people found themselves without essential freedom, in political or economic rights. As sheep farming became more profitable than agricultural work, the pens of the common land expropriated more people who became poor and were punished. Under Henry VIII, in order to seal a divorce from Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn (whom he soon beheaded for alleged infidelity), the Church of England was declared separate from Rome in the Act of Supremacy of 1534, with the king at its head.[18] The Law in Wales Act of 1535 united Wales and England into a single administrative system, while the king became increasingly despotic, executing Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More in 1535, dissolving monasteries and murdering those who resisted. After the death of Henry VIII and the power struggles that followed the death of his son Edward VI at the age of 15,[19] Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, ascended the throne in 1558. Half a century of prosperity followed when Elizabeth I avoided wars but founded companies like the East India Company to monopolize trade routes. Under his successor James I. Other companies were formed to colonize North America, including the London Company and the Virginia Company in 1606 and the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1628. Many religious dissidents left England to colonize the New World. “The Court is therefore compelled to conclude that the decision to advise Her Majesty to adjourn Parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of thwarting or preventing Parliament from exercising its constitutional functions without reasonable justification.” With a hereditary monarch, the House of Lords remains a historical curiosity in the British Constitution.
Traditionally, it represented the landed aristocracy and political allies of the monarch or government and was reformed only gradually and incompletely. A 2012 House of Lords Reform Bill proposed to have 360 directly elected members, 90 appointed members, 12 bishops and an uncertain number of ministerial members. The elected Lords would have been elected by proportional representation for 15 years, by 10 regional constituencies under a single transferable vote system. However, the government withdrew its support after the Conservative backbenchers worked. It has often been argued that if the Lords were elected from geographical constituencies and one party controlled both sides, “there would be little chance of effectively controlling or revising the affairs of government.” A second possibility, as in the Swedish Riksdag, might simply be to abolish the House of Lords: this actually happened during the English Civil War in 1649, but was restored with the monarchy in 1660. A third option proposed is to elect peers based on professional and professional groups, so that health care workers elect peers with particular health skills, education people elect a fixed number of education experts, lawyers elect legal representatives, etc. [189] This is considered necessary to improve the quality of legislation. At the regional level, the United Kingdom participated in the elaboration of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights, which aimed to guarantee the fundamental standards of democracy and human rights in order to preserve peace in post-war Europe. At the same time, after long-standing visions of European integration with the Uk “at the centre”[149], democratic European countries sought to integrate their economies in order both to make war impossible and to advance social progress. In 1972, the United Kingdom joined the European Community (renamed the European Union in 1992) and committed itself in the European Communities Act 1972 to implement the EU law in which it was involved. In 1995, the United Kingdom also became a founding member of the World Trade Organization.
[150] To ensure the direct application of the European Convention by the courts, the Human Rights Act 1998 was passed. It had also adopted the International Criminal Court Act 2001 to enable the prosecution of war criminals and had submitted to the jurisdiction of the Court. However, in 2016, the UK voted in a referendum on whether to leave the European Union, resulting in a turnout of 72.21%, which translated into a margin of 48.11% to “stay” and 51.89% for “leaving” on unspecified terms (27% of the total UK population). [151] However, large majorities in Scotland, Northern Ireland and London were in favour of remaining in the EU. The 2019 parliamentary elections solved the problem with a majority in parliament elected on a platform to renounce membership: the terms were agreed in December 2020. The Supreme Court ruled that Boris Johnson`s advice to the Queen to adjourn Parliament for five weeks at the height of the Brexit crisis was illegal. Three main themes of police power and freedom are (1) powers of arrest, detention and interrogation, (2) powers to enter, search or confiscate property, and (3) police liability for abuse of power. First, section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 allows a constable to arrest and search persons if a constable “has reasonable grounds to suspect” that he or she will “find stolen or prohibited items”, he or she may seize the items and use reasonable force. [288] The officer must indicate his name, his police station and the reasons for the search.
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