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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.
A parliamentary system may be either bicameral, with two chambers of parliament (or houses) or unicameral, with just one parliamentary chamber. A bicameral parliament usually consists of a directly elected lower house with the power to determine the executive government, and an upper house which may be appointed or elected through a different ...
As in the United Kingdom and in other similar parliamentary systems, in the U.S. Americans eligible to vote, vote for an individual candidate (there are sometimes exceptions in local government elections) [note 1] and not a party list. The U.S. government being a federal government, officials are elected at the federal (national), state and ...
In some parliamentary systems, the prime minister is a member of the parliament (e.g. in the United Kingdom), whereas in others they are not (e.g. in the Netherlands). They are commonly the leader of the majority party in the lower house of parliament, but only hold the office as long as the "confidence of the house" is maintained.
Queen Anne in the House of Lords, c. 1708–1714, by Peter Tillemans. According to constitutional scholar A.V. Dicey, "Parliament means, in the mouth of a lawyer (though the word has often a different sense in ordinary conversation), the King, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons; these three bodies acting together may be aptly described as the 'King in Parliament,' and constitute ...
This is the origin of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty and is usually seen as the fundamental principle of the British constitution. With these principles of parliamentary sovereignty, majority control can gain access to unlimited constitutional authority, creating what has been called "elective dictatorship" or "modern autocracy".
While the U.S. Constitution does set parameters for the election of federal officials, state law, not federal, regulates most aspects of elections in the U.S., including primary elections, the eligibility of voters (beyond the basic constitutional definition), the method of choosing presidential electors, as well as the running of state and ...
Popular sovereignty is the principle that the leaders of a state and its government are created and sustained by the consent of its people, who are the source of all political legitimacy. Citizens may unite and offer to delegate a portion of their sovereign powers and duties to those who wish to serve as officers of the state, contingent on the ...