Acts of Parliament

“ All are alike Acts of Parliament. Acts in the nature of new departures in the Law of an important kind are frequently limited in time, very often with a view of gaining experience as to the practical working of a new system before the Legislature commits itself to final legislation on the subject, sometimes, no doubt, by way of compromise with the Opposition, objecting to the passing of such a measure at all. ”

“ Parliament is not an administrative body. Summoned by the Crown, with its assent it passes laws, gives and takes away rights, authorises and directs taxation and expenditure; but in executive business the Crown acts through Ministers who are not appointed by Parliament, though undoubtedly responsible to it for their conduct. ”

“ VIII.—Of the Act for the Limitation of Actions popular, Cap. 4. of the printed Acts, 1 Hen. VIII., two Copies appear at the Parliament Office; one with the Royal Assent, and the other with an Indorsement of Le Roy s’avisera. In the first, the Time of the Continuance of the Act, till the next Parliament, is written on an Erasure, and the Word “notwithstanding,” which is material to the Sense, is omitted, as it is also in the Roll in Chancery. In the other Copy at the Parliament Office, the Words, “till the next Parliament” are run through with a Pen, and the Words “for ever” added. ”

“ But, as you well know, Parliament cannot proceed to business without the session being opened by the King, or by some Commission authorized by him. No Regent can be appointed or authorized to exercise acts of royal authority but by Act of Parliament; nor can any such Act be valid and binding in law without the King's consent.
The Revolution affords the only thing like a precedent even for the principles on which we can proceed ”

“ For remedy whereof be it enacted, and it is hereby enacted by the King's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that the clerk of the Parliaments shall endorse (in English) on every Act of Parliament which shall pass after the eighth day of April one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three, immediately after the title of such Act, the day, month and year when the same shall have passed and shall have received the royal assent ”

“ In the Report also of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, in the Year 1800, upon the Subject of the Public Records, it is stated, that many Statutes and Ordinances in the Rolls of Parliament are not inserted in the Printed Statute Books; And it is certain that many Acts and Matters not found on any Statute Roll, nor contained in any printed Editions of the Statutes, are found on the Parliament Rolls, which appear to have received the threefold Assent of King, Lords, and Commons, or to have such Qualities, as have been allowed by Courts of Law to imply that Assent. ”

“ The Parliament of the Union shall be the sovereign legislative power in and over the Union, and notwithstanding anything in any other law contained, no Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland passed after the eleventh day of December, 1931, shall extend, or be deemed to extend, to the Union as part of the law of the Union, unless extended thereto by an Act of the Parliament of the Union. ”

“ There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the "end of time," or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void. ”

“ The Prime Minister or any Minister of State acting on his behalf shall at the commencement of each session and may from time to time during the course of any session of Parliament as circumstances may require, make known what bills are to be introduced in the Senate during that session. ”

“ On the 6th, a fresh ordinance, declaring that the people being, after God, the source of all just power, the representatives of the people are the supreme power in the nation; and that whatsoever is enacted or declared for law by the Commons in Parliament hath the force of a law, and the people are concluded thereby, though the consent of King or Peers be not had thereto. ”

“ No matter in which of the houses of Parliament a bill may originate nor by whom introduced—a minister or a member of the opposition—by the fiction of law, or rather of constitutional principle, the sovereign is supposed to have prepared it agreeably to his will and then submitted it to Parliament for their advice and consent. ”

“ The limitless competence of Parliament involves the power to set aside or to modify at any time any Common Law principle or practice, while, on the other hand, no development of the Common Law can repeal an act of Parliament. ”

“ If it be penned, that the King enacts with the Assent of the Lords, or with the Assent of the Commons, it is not an Act of Parliament, for the Record of the Act expressing which of them gave their Assent, excludeth all Intendments that any other gave their Assent. ”

“ Now, my notion is, that every great measure can have only one real importance, by throwing weight into the scale of one or other of the two great Parliamentary parties. Do what you will,—agitate, write, speak, pamphleteer, and libel,—but all resolves itself to some question of a harm to one side and good to the other, the country the while being wonderfully little the better or the worse for all the legislation. We used to have a Constitution in England: we have now only got a Parliament, and to be anything in the nation a man must make himself felt there! ”

“ The British Parliament can do every thing they please. Their bill of rights is only an act of Parliament, which may be, at any time, altered or modified, without a violation of the constitution. The people of Great Britain have no constitution to control their legislature. ”

“ That for every new peerage granted by the Crown, another county member should be added to the Parliament. 3. That none should vote in Parliament except peers or elected members. 4. That the king should not have the power of refusing the royal assent to any Act passed by the Estates. 5. That when Parliament was not sitting the executive Government should be in the hands of a Committee chosen by Parliament. 6. That the King should not have the power of making war or peace, or concluding any treaty, except with consent of Parliament. ”

“ If the Supreme Court and the Government differ on a question of jurisdiction, or on a question of legislation within the towns which are the seats of Government, there is absolutely no umpire but the Imperial Parliament. ”

“ Parliament should take power to refer to the Statutory Body not only business connected with Private Bill Legislation, but also such other matters as in its wisdom it may deem suitable for reference, under prescribed conditions. ”

“ So here, the legislature does not confine its action to the making of law, yet all its functions are included within the term legislation. An act of Parliament may do no more than ratify a treaty with a foreign state, or alter the calendar, or establish a uniform time throughout the realm, or make some change in the style and title of the reigning sovereign, or alter the coinage, or appropriate public money, or declare war or make peace, or grant a divorce, or annex or abandon territory. ”

“ On the presentation of this report, it was resolved that annual Parliaments are the right of the people, and that "the present state of the representation is inadequate to the object, and a departure from the first principles of the Constitution." ”

“ Wherever the supreme power of legislation has resided, has been supposed to reside also a full power to change the form of the government. Even in Great Britain, where the principles of political and civil liberty have been most discussed, and where we hear most of the rights of the Constitution, it is maintained that the authority of the Parliament is transcendent and uncontrollable, as well with regard to the Constitution, as the ordinary objects of legislative provision. ”

“ It remains for us to express our conviction that if any change of the importance of those which we have recommended is to be carried into effect, it can only be successfully done through the medium of an Act of Parliament. ”

“ The fact that our constitution has to be collected from statutes, from legal decisions, from observation of the course of conduct of the business of politics; that much of what is written is of a negative sort, stating what the Crown and its ministers cannot do; that there is no part of it which an omnipotent Parliament may not change at will ”

“ In this Passage the Two Times a Year seem to be Stationary; the Calling a Parliament Oftner than Two Times a Year if need were, is plainly intended for Contingencies of State, and when the Ardua Regni, or Extraordinary Affairs of the Nation require an Extraordinary Parliament. I say, and will make out to all the World, by Laws and Declarations of Parliament, that the King has a Power of calling Parliaments within the Law; But I never did, nor never will say to the end of my Life, that the King can hinder Parliaments Appointed by Law. ”

“ No doubt, if the legislative power were quite distinct from the executive power, England and Ireland might as easily have two legislatures as two Chancellors and two Courts of King's Bench. But though, in books written by theorists, the executive power and the legislative power may be treated as things quite distinct, every man acquainted with the real working of our constitution knows that the two powers are most closely connected, nay, intermingled with each other. During several generations, the whole administration of affairs has been conducted in conformity with the sense of Parliament. ”

“ The received doctrine as to the relations of the two Houses of Parliament to one another, the whole theory of the position of the body known as the Cabinet and of its chief the Prime Minister, every detail in short of the practical working of government among us, is a matter belonging wholly to the unwritten Constitution and not at all to the written Law. ”

“ An amendment, which has the deliberate judgment of two-thirds of congress, and of three fourths of the states, can scarcely be deemed unsuited to the prosperity, or security of the republic. It must combine as much wisdom and experience in its favour, as ordinarily can belong to the management of any human concerns. [10] In England the supreme power of the nation resides in parliament; and, in a legal sense, it is so omnipotent, that it has authority to change the whole structure of the constitution, without resort to any confirmation of the people. ”

“ Each of these differences marks a stage in the return to the doctrine of common sense, that, convenient as it is in all ordinary times that Parliament should be summoned by the writ of the Sovereign, yet it is not from that summons, but from the choice of the people, that Parliament derives its real being and its inherent powers. ”

“ We, therefore, your Majesty’s most humble Commons assembled in Parliament, following the examples of this worthy case of our ancestors, and out of a duty to those for whom we serve, finding that your Majesty, without advice or consent of Parliament, hath lately, in time of peace, set both greater impositions, and far more in number than any of your noble ancestors did in time of war, have with all humility presumed to present this most just and necessary petition unto your Majesty: That all impositions set without the assent of Parliament may be quite abolished and taken away ”

“ Until such time as the chairman of the Council has been designated, or whenever the chairman is absent from any meeting of the Council or of the executive committee, the Commissioner for Coloured Affairs shall act as the chairman of the Council, or, as the case may be, of the executive committee, and shall when so acting have a casting vote in the case of an equality of votes, but no deliberative vote. ”

“ The legislative powers of the Commonwealth are, under the provisions of the Bill, vested in a Governor-General, appointed by the Queen, a Senate, and a House of Representatives. The laws passed by the Parliament are to be presented to the Governor-General, who may assent to them in the Queen's name, reserve them for the signification of her pleasure, withhold his assent, or return them to the Parliament with any amendments that he may recommend. ”

“ The information officer of a public body may refuse a request for access to a record of the body if its disclosure would be likely to materially jeopardise the economic interests or financial welfare of the Republic or the ability of the government to manage the economy of the Republic effectively in the best interests of the Republic. ”

“ VIII. commonly intitled, 'An Act concerning Richard Stroud,' is a general Law, extending to indemnify all and every of the Members of both Houses of Parliament, in all Parliaments touching any Bills, speaking, reasoning, and declaring, of any Matter or Matters concerning the Parliament, to be communed and treated of, and is a declaratory Law of the antient and necessary Rights and Privileges of Parliament [11] ." The Commons likewise, on the Consideration of this Act, held, that whatever concerns Privilege of Parliament, must be a general Law [12] . ”