An advantage of a codified constitution, on the other hand, would be that it helps to protect rights. Uncodified constitutions do not generally have higher law and so it can be vague and hard to tell which laws should overrule others.
The main example of higher law in the UK is the Human Rights Act, and even this can be challenging to interpret. With a codified constitution it is much clearer what rights people have because it is all written out in a single document. Furthermore, the limits of the government’s power are also much clearer, meaning it is easier to tell when the government is acting unconstitutionally. For example, in April 2018 Theresa May ordered air strikes on Syria without consulting Parliament, claiming it would have taken away the element of surprise and it would no longer have been possible to destroy the chemicals. Some critics argued she should have taken the issue to parliament as her predecessor David Cameron had done, as this was the convention.
She insisted that conventions could be broken. Whether what she did was lawful would be perfectly clear if the UK had a codified
