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The British Constitution

The Constitution of the United Kingdom or British constitution is the system of rules that decides the political governance of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Unlike in most countries, such as the US, it is not codified into a single document. Thus, it is known as an uncodified constitution. This enables the constitution to be easily amended as rules are not entrenched. However, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom recognises that there are constitutional principles, including parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law, democracy and upholding international law.

The Supreme Court also recognises that some Acts of Parliament have special constitutional status. These include Magna Carta, which in 1215 required the King to call a "common counsel" (now called Parliament) to represent people, to hold courts in a fixed place, to guarantee fair trials, to guarantee free movement of people, to free the church from the state, and to guarantee rights of "common" people to use the land. After the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Glorious Revolution, the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Claim of Right Act 1689 cemented Parliament's position as the supreme law making body, and said that the "election of members of Parliament ought to be free".

The Treaty of Union between England and Scotland in 1706, followed by two Acts of Union 1707, one in the Scottish, the other in the English parliament, unified England, Wales and Scotland. Ireland joined in a similar way through the Acts of Union 1801. The Irish Free State separated after the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty took effect in 1922. Northern Ireland remained within the union.

After a slow process of electoral reform, the UK guarantees every adult the equal right to vote in the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928. After World War II, the UK became a founding member of the Council of Europe to uphold human rights, and the United Nations to guarantee international peace and security. The UK was a member of the European Union, whose predecessor the European Communities (the Common Market) it first joined in 1973, but left in 2020. The UK is also a founding member of the International Labour Organization and the World Trade Organization to participate in regulating the global economy.

USA

The United States of America is the fourth largest country in the world (after Russia, Canada and China). It occupies the southern part of North America and stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. It also includes Alaska in the north and Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The total area of the country is about nine and a half million square kilometres. The USA borders on Can­ada in the north and on Mexico in the south. It also has a seaboarder with Russia.

The USA is made up of 50 states and the District of Columbia, a special federal area where the capital of the country, Washington, is situated. The population of the country is about 250 million.

If we look at the map of the USA, we can see lowlands and mountains. The highest mountains are the Rocky Mountains, the Cordillera and the Sierra Nevada. The high­est peak is Mount McKinley, which is located in Alaska.

America's largest rivers are the Mississippi, the Mis­souri, the Rio Grande and the Columbia. The Great Lakes on the border with Canada are the largest and deepest in the USA.

The climate of the country varies greatly. The coldest regions are in the north. The climate of Alaska is arctic. The climate of the central part is continental. The south has subtropical climate. Hot winds blowing from the Gulf of Mexico often bring typhoons. The climate along the Pacific coast is much warmer than that of the Atlantic coast.

The USA is a highly developed industrial country. It is the world's leading producer of copper and oil and the world's second producer of iron ore and coal. Among the most important manufacturing industries are aircraft, cars, textiles, radio and television sets, armaments, furniture and paper.

Though mainly European and African in origin, Ameri­cans are made up from nearly all races and nations, in­cluding Chinese and native Americans.

The largest cities are New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, San Francisco and others.

The United States is a federal union of 50 states, each of which has its own government. The seat of the central (federal) government is Washington, DC. According to the US Constitution the powers of the government are divided into 3 branches: the executive, headed by the President, the legislative, exercised by the Congress, and the juridi­cal. The Congress consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives. There are two main political parties in the USA: the Republican and the Democratic.