DO CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTIONS BIND

C ONSTITUTIONAL conventions are to be found in political and legal systems of very different types. Not surprisingly, they exist in considerable abundance in those systems—the prime example is the United Kingdom—the affairs of which are ordered by an unwritten constitution. Familiar instances of constitutional conventions in British government include the following: that the Monarch is required to appoint as Prime Minister the person best placed to command a majority in the House of Commons; that governments are to resign when defeated on a vote of no confidence; that the judicial members of the House of Lords refrain from indulging in party political debate in the chamber; and that ministers are to resign from office after displaying an (admittedly indeterminate) degree of mismanagement of their departments. The preconditions of the existence of any particular constitutional convention are set out in a well-known passage by Sir Ivor Jennings.