A constitution is a set of principles, which may be written or unwritten, that establishes the distribution of power within a political system, relationships between political institutions, the limits of the government jurisdiction, the rights of citizens and the method of amending the constitution itself. The constitution is one of the most important things in politics. The main reason for the constitution is that we cannot trust the government or anyone that has power over us. Power corrupts the people, we need to be protected from those that have power, without a constitution the government could do whatever it wanted, they could violate freedoms, or be oppressing minorities.
In the UK we have a unwritten constitution also known as a uncodified constitution. Our constitution is non authorative, and provides us with a single tier legal system with no form of higher law, our system also is not entrenched, so parliament have sovereignty. The constitution within the UK is malleable to change and is known as unitary. Moreover it is not judiciable judges do not have a legal standard against which they can debate that the actions of other bodies are 'constitutional' or 'unconstitutional'. It is also easy to amend in case of emergency.
However American have a codified constitution which is set out in one document and the document is authoritative, it constitutes higher law. It also binds all political institutions including those that make ordinary law, this therefore fives rise to a two tier legal system. Moreover their codified constitution is entrenched therefore making it difficult to amend in case of emergency and it is also difficult to abolish. However unlike the uncodified constitution we have here in the UK, the codified constitution is judiciable and all political bodies are subject to authority of the courts,
A constitution is important otherwise a dictatorship could occur.
