Government
In government, convention is a set of unwritten rules that participants in the government must follow. These rules can be ignored only if justification is clear, or can be provided. Otherwise, consequences follow. Consequences may include ignoring some other convention that has until now been followed. According to the traditional doctrine (Dicey), conventions cannot be enforced in courts, because they are non-legal sets of rules. Convention is particularly important in the Commonwealth realms and other governments using the Westminster System of government, where many of the rules of government are unwritten.
Read more about this topic: Convention (norm)
Famous quotes containing the word government:
“We talk about a representative government; but what a monster of a government is that where the noblest faculties of the mind, and the whole heart, are not represented! A semihuman tiger or ox, stalking over the earth, with its heart taken out and the top of its brain shot away. Heroes have fought well on their stumps when their legs were shot off, but I never heard of any good done by such a government as that.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It does seem strange that the only place in the government which I would have liked to fill myself I am forced to give to another.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“I wish my countrymen to consider that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)