Concept

Parliamentary sovereignty

Overview

Parliamentary sovereignty, also called parliamentary supremacy or legislative supremacy, is a concept in the constitutional law of some parliamentary democracies. It holds that the legislative body has absolute sovereignty and is supreme over all other government institutions, including executive or judicial bodies. It also holds that the legislative body may change or repeal any previous legislation and so it is not bound by written law (in some cases, not even a constitution) or by precedent.

In some countries, parliamentary sovereignty may be contrasted with separation of powers and constitutionalism, which limits the legislature's scope often to general law-making and makes it subject to external judicial review, where laws passed by the legislature may be declared invalid in certain circumstances.

States that have sovereign legislatures include: the United Kingdom, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Jamaica, Israel.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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And this is that which giveth being to a democracy, wherein the sovereign assembly was called of the Greeks, by the name of _Demus_, that is, the people, from whence cometh democracy. So that, where to the supreme and independent court, every man may come that will, and give his vote, there the sovereign is called the people.
Thomas Hobbes, The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 04
States what Parliamentary sovereignty is.
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A body politic of this kind is called a Democracy, which may be defined as a society which wields all its power as a whole. The sovereign power is not restrained by any laws, but every one is bound to obey it in all things; such is the state of things implied when men either tacitly or expressly handed over to it all their power of self-defense, or in other words, all their right. For if they had wished to retain…
Benedictus de Spinoza, The Philosophy of Spinoza
States what Parliamentary sovereignty is.
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Sect. 160. This power to act according to discretion, for the public good, without the prescription of the law, and sometimes even against it, is that which is called prerogative: for since in some governments the lawmaking power is not always in being, and is usually too numerous, and so too slow, for the dispatch requisite to execution; and because also it is impossible to foresee, and so by laws to provide for…
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
States what Parliamentary sovereignty is.
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Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Liberalism.

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