Rule of Law

Section 1 of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 provides that the Act does not adversely affect the existing constitutional principle of the rule of law, or the Lord Chancellor's existing constitutional role in relation to that principle. This was the first time the rule of law was specifically referred to in statute, giving it statutory recognition alongside the long-standing common law understanding of what the principle entails.

The rule of law operates alongside the separation of powers — the division of the state into the executive (government), the legislature (Parliament) and the judiciary (the courts) — which prevents the concentration of power in any one branch and allows each branch to check the others. The UK, unlike most states, has no single written constitutional document; its constitutional arrangements are found instead in statutes and in the common law developed by the courts.

The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 gave practical effect to the rule of law and judicial independence by imposing an explicit statutory duty on government ministers, including the Lord Chancellor, to uphold the independence of the judiciary and by barring ministers from seeking to influence judicial decisions through special access to judges. The Act also transferred the Lord Chancellor's former judicial functions to the Lord Chief Justice, who became President of the Courts of England and Wales, and created the UK Supreme Court as a body separate from and independent of the House of Lords.