LLM Group 1 Constitutional and Administrative Law Comparative Constitutional Law 2025-26 Question Paper with Solutions

For full marks, cover: the five constitutions on a common set of axes rather than one after another; a table that lets the examiner see the comparison at a glance; and a final third on relevance, which is where the second half of the question's marks sit. An answer that describes five constitutions in turn and stops has answered half the question.

The first axis is form. Four of the five are written and enacted; the United Kingdom's is unwritten in the technical sense that it has never been reduced to one instrument, though a great deal of it is in writing, from Magna Carta 1215 and the Bill of Rights 1689 to the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. The Indian Constitution is the longest national constitution in the world, and the length is deliberate: it had to accommodate the integration of princely States, a plural society, a federal division and an entire chapter of emergency provisions in a country with no prior tradition of constitutional self government.

The third axis is the distribution of power, and the drafting histories run in opposite directions. The United States and Switzerland federated upwards, from thirteen colonies and from cantons that were sovereign before the confederation, and both therefore leave the residue with the units: the Tenth Amendment in America, Article 3 of the Swiss Constitution which declares the cantons sovereign in so far as their sovereignty is not limited by the Federal Constitution. Canada and India federated downwards, out of an existing colonial administration, and both give the residue to the centre: section 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867, with its opening peace, order and good government clause, and Article 248 read with Entry 97 of List I in India. The United Kingdom remains unitary; devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is statutory and, in strict law, revocable.

The fifth axis is rights and their enforcement. The American Bill of Rights of 1791 is a set of prohibitions on government, framed negatively, with no directive component. India's Part III is enforceable and Article 32 makes the remedy itself a fundamental right, but Part IV states an unenforceable social programme, so the Indian Constitution distributes constitutional obligation between the courts and the political branches instead of giving all of it to the courts. Canada's Charter has a limitation clause in section 1 and, uniquely, an override in section 33 by which a legislature may declare a statute to operate notwithstanding certain Charter rights for five renewable years. In the United Kingdom the Human Rights Act 1998 gives the courts a strong interpretive duty under section 3 and, where interpretation fails, only a declaration of incompatibility under section 4, which does not affect the validity of the statute.

What India actually took, and from where

The borrowings are examinable and are often asked as a sub question, so name them precisely. From the United Kingdom came parliamentary government, the single citizenship, the rule of law and the office of the Speaker. From the United States came the Fundamental Rights, judicial review, the independence of the judiciary and the impeachment of the President. From Canada came the federation with a strong centre, the very word Union, the vesting of residuary power in the centre, the appointment of Governors by the centre and the advisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. From Ireland came the Directive Principles, the nomination of members to the Rajya Sabha and the method of electing the President.

Relevance to contemporary constitutional governance

Rigidity and legitimacy are being tested in all five systems at once. The German experience, which is the cleanest illustration available, is that a rigid amending rule can still move quickly when there is consensus: the Basic Law was amended on 18 March 2025 by five hundred and twelve votes to two hundred and six, with the Bundesrat concurring on 21 March 2025, to exempt defence spending above one per cent of gross domestic product from the debt brake and to create a five hundred billion euro infrastructure fund. In the United States, by contrast, the last ratified amendment was in 1992, and constitutional change now happens almost entirely through judicial reinterpretation, which is a very different distribution of constituent power.

The Indian material for this part of the answer is the last two years. Mineral Area Development Authority v Steel Authority of India, decided on 25 July 2024 by nine judges, eight to one, held that royalty is not a tax and upheld the States' power to tax mineral rights and mineral bearing land under Entries 49 and 50 of List II, overruling India Cement Ltd v State of Tamil Nadu, (1990) 1 SCC 12. That is a fiscal federalism decision of the first order and it moves India's practice closer to the Canadian and Swiss position that the units must have an independent revenue base if the division of powers is to mean anything.

A fifth relevance point, and the one most often missed, is that a constitution's fundamental features determine who bears the cost of constitutional failure. In Switzerland the cost falls on the electorate, because there is no court to correct a federal statute. In the United Kingdom it falls on Parliament, because a declaration of incompatibility leaves the statute standing. In India it falls on the Supreme Court, because Article 32 makes it the guaranteed forum for every rights claim in a country of one point four billion people. The Indian design is the most generous in access and therefore the most exposed to delay, which is why the arrears of the Court are a constitutional and not merely an administrative problem.

R (Miller) v The Prime Minister, [2019] UKSC 41. In August 2019 the Prime Minister advised the Queen to prorogue Parliament for five weeks at a critical moment before the date set for withdrawal from the European Union. Eleven Justices held unanimously that the advice was justiciable and unlawful, because a prorogation is unlawful if it frustrates or prevents, without reasonable justification, the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions, and they declared the prorogation null and of no effect. The Court derived the limit from parliamentary sovereignty itself and from the accountability of the executive to Parliament. It is what a constitution without a written text and without a power to strike down statutes can nevertheless do, and it is the British entry in every row of this comparison.

Conclusion. The five constitutions answer the same four questions differently: how power is divided, how the executive is held to account, how rights are protected, and how the text may be changed. The United States chose rigidity and judicial supremacy, Switzerland chose direct democracy and no review of federal statutes, the United Kingdom chose parliamentary sovereignty softened by convention and by the interpretive technique of the Human Rights Act, Canada chose a strong centre with an express legislative override, and India chose a long written text with enforceable rights, a strong centre, and a judicially created limit on the amending power that none of the others possesses. Their relevance today is that each design is under pressure at precisely the point where it is least defended, which is why comparative constitutional law is a working discipline rather than a museum of documents.