The Changing Concepts of the Constitution.

Area of Science:

• Political Science
• Computational Linguistics
• Legal Studies

Background:

• The United Kingdom's constitution has undergone significant formal reforms, including devolution and human rights incorporation.
• These formal changes may have prompted shifts in the semantic understanding of key constitutional concepts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate informal semantic changes in central constitutional concepts within UK parliamentary discourse.
• To assess the evolving relationship between concepts like parliamentary sovereignty and the UK constitution using computational methods.

Main Methods:

• Employed a novel machine learning approach to analyze a large corpus of parliamentary debates.
• Quantified the semantic relatedness of core constitutional concepts to the UK constitution's meaning over time.

Main Results:

• Parliamentary sovereignty shows a decreased semantic connection to the UK constitution in recent discourse.
• The study provides empirical evidence for theoretical expectations regarding constitutional evolution.

Conclusions:

• Formal constitutional changes in the UK are associated with shifts in the conceptual meaning of the constitution.
• Parliamentary sovereignty's diminished role in discourse suggests a potential transformation in its constitutional significance.