Mr Justice Beatson considered several centuries of constitutional reform, whether further reforms were necessary - but also whether a willingness to reform was a destabilising factor.
“First, and perhaps not surprisingly, the fundamental imbalance between the executive and the legislature in our constitution has not been addressed. Secondly, the process has produced a system, the hallmark of which is complexity rather than “transparency”, let alone clarity.
“Thirdly, more of our constitution is to be found in statutes and other official documents. However, the nature of the process, the attempt to preserve the flexibility of conventional constitutions within any new written format, and in particular the willingness to revisit decisions, means we cannot yet say that we have taken a firm step on the road to making our constitution primarily “legal” rather than primarily conventional.”
