The us constitution and the british constitution

The form of the US government is based on the Constitution of September 17, 1787 adopted after the War of Independence.

The US Constitution consists of Preamble, seven articles and twenty-six amendments. The Constitution sets up a strict division of powers: classifying governmental powers as executive, legislative and judicial (executive - the US Constitution and the British Constitution).

The US Constitution consists of Preamble, seven articles and twenty-six amendments. The Constitution sets up a strict division of powers: classifying governmental powers as executive, legislative and judicial (executive - the President and his Administration, legislative - the US Congress, judicial - the US Supreme Court).

In December 1791, the Congress adopted ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights.

To understand English constitutional law it is necessary to study numerous documents, including constitutional treaties like the Bill of Rights, various statutes and judicial decisions and others. But the whole of the Constitution of Britain will not be found in any of these documents. The English constitution is to be regarded as "unwritten", as it is not codified as a whole in any particular document or documents. The English Constitution is considered to be flexible because Parliament can "make or unmake" any law.

The statement that the British constitution is not 'written' does not mean that the British citizens possess no important constitutional documents; it merely means that the constitution is not embodied in any single document, or series of documents, containing our essential constitutionals laws. Thus the British citizens have many enactments which either have been or still are, of great importance. One need only cite as examples Magna Charta (1215), the Bill of Rights (1688)-which sets out the principal rights gained by Parliament and the nation as the result of the seventeenth century constitutional struggles - the Act of Settlement (1700), and the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949.

Crimes in the usa

In the United States, as elsewhere, the causes of serious crime are hotly debated and many reasons for it suggested. Among these are unemployment, drag-abuse, poverty, inadequate police enforcement, ineffective courts, racial discrimination, consumerism, television, and "a general decline in middle-class values".

Surprisingly, a major study of crime in the U.S. carried out by Northwestern University in 1982 found that "the number of poor people in a city is only marginally related to property or violent crime." In other words, American cities with a higher rate of unemployment and poverty do not necessarily also have a higher crime rate.

Many experts are coming to believe that only grass-roots efforts to improve community life overall will have a lasting effect. Many communities across the nation have started their own campaigns against crime, encouraging their citizens to participate in crime-prevention programs and to report crimes. Several civil rights groups actively support such "self-help" campaigns. In some neighborhoods, citizens participate in "neighborhood watch" programs and organize groups to patrol the streets,

Public opinion polls show that most Americans feel handguns are responsible for the high murder rate. A majority of Americans, some 70 percent, favor laws which would ban the private ownership of all handguns. At present, there are about 23,000 state and local gun laws and ordinances throughout the U.S. Some states only prohibit carrying concealed handguns, in others owners must register all handguns and have a license to carry them, either open or concealed. In some communities people are not allowed to own any handguns.

Although most Americans would like to forbid the owning of handguns, there is still no single federal law to that effect. Perhaps the major reason for this is the lobbying efforts of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its three million members. They cite the Second Amendment to the Constitution ("... the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"). They argue that about half of the some 120 million firearms in the U.S. are owned by hunters, and their slogan claims that "Guns don't kill, people do."

Those in favor of a national law point out that the Second Amendment begins with the phrase "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state..." This goes back to the time when seven out of the original thirteen colonies required all males to serve in the state militias. When needed, men served as "citizen soldiers." This, they conclude, is no longer the case, and the easy availability of guns simply leads to too many deaths. At present, a national law-forbidding the ownership of all guns appears unlikely. However, more state and communities will probably pass their own much more restrictive laws in the future.