Английский язык. Юлаева С.С. - 40 стр.

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Unit II
Major Foreign Governments
I. Read and translate the text.
II. Write the translation of the passage beginning with “The Unwritten
Constitution” up to “Continuity and Change”.
1. Great Britain
The roots of the American political system are buried deep in English
political and social history. Yet there are important differences between the two
systems of government. Most of those differences grow out of this
fundamentally important point: Unlike government in the United States,
government in Great Britain is unitary and parliamentary in form and rests upon
an unwritten constitution.
The Unwritten Constitution
It is not strictly true to say that the British constitution is unwritten. Parts of
the constitution can, indeed, be found in books and charters. But there is no
single document that constitutes the British constitution – as there is, say, a
Constitution of the United States.
The British Constitution has both a written and an unwritten part. The
written part includes historic charters, significant laws (or acts of Parliament),
and innumerable court decisions. The unwritten part derives from customs and
usages – practices that have gained acceptance over time. We call the written
parts the law of the constitution and the unwritten parts the conventions of the
constitution.
The Law of the Constitution Many historic documents figure in Britain’s
written constitution. Perhaps the best known is the Magna Carta of 1215. Others,
include the Petition of Right of 1628 and the Bill of Rights of 1689. Each of
those documents was a landmark in the centuries-long struggle to limit the
powers of the English monarch and advance the concept of due process of law.
Certain acts of Parliament also form a basic part of the British constitution.
One example of these is the Representation of Peoples Act of 1969. That act
lowered the voting age in all British elections from 21 to 18. In the United
States, you will recall, such a change required a formal amendment to the
Constitution.
Finally, court decisions are another part of the law of the constitution.
Centuries of court decisions have created a body of legal rules covering nearly
every aspect of human conduct. Such decisions, as you have read, make up the
common law.
The Conventions of the Constitution The truly unwritten part of the
British constitution consists of the customs and practices of British politics. For
example, no document says that parliament must hold a new session each year.
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