Parliamentary privilege encompasses certain special rights and immunities deemed necessary to protect legislatures and members from undue interference so that they can effectively carry out their functions of inquiring, debating and legislating. The doctrine has engendered conflicts that have never been wholly resolved between courts and legislatures, and between individual rights and parliamentary privileges. The advent of modern human rights and emphasis on democratic values such as accountability and transparency has brought a new urgency to this problem. The current passive and defensive approach of Canadian legislatures is unsustainable, as is the approach taken by the SCC in recent jurisprudence. The paper argues against expanding the scope of judicial review of privilege claims as a solution, and in favour of open modernization processes led by parliamentarians, and involving public participation. Further, the paper advocates for the application of a “relational approach” versus the traditional “contest approach” to parliamentary privilege.

Parliamentary privilege encompasses certain special rights and immunities deemed necessary to protect legislatures and members from undue interference so that they can effectively carry out their functions of inquiring, debating and legislating. The doctrine has engendered conflicts that have never been wholly resolved between courts and legislatures, and between individual rights and parliamentary privileges. The advent of modern human rights and emphasis on democratic values such as accountability and transparency has brought a new urgency to this problem. The current passive and defensive approach of Canadian legislatures is unsustainable, as is the approach taken by the SCC in recent jurisprudence. The paper argues against expanding the scope of judicial review of privilege claims as a solution, and in favour of open modernization processes led by parliamentarians, and involving public participation. Further, the paper advocates for the application of a “relational approach” versus the traditional “contest approach” to parliamentary privilege.

Diese These ist über parlamentarische Privileg. Das Privile ist eine alte parlamentarische Macht. Alle Länder, die Demokratie durchgeführt haben oder bald haben, bestimmen parlamentarische Privileg in ihre Verfassungen. Der Zweck von Privileg ist, dass Abgeordneten die Meinung sowie ihre eigenen politische Position frei äußern zu shutzen, und sie brauchen nicht sich um Vergeltung von politischen Motiven zu sorgen. Das Parlament kann formulieren selbst die Geschäftsordnung und Disziplin des Parlamentes, damit das Parlament unabhängig sein kann, ihre Aufgaben frei erfüllen kann und seine Funktionen frei ausüben kann. Parlamentarische Privileg wird aber oft durch Publikum verkannt, die glauben, dass die Eliten der Gesellschaft eine besondere Schutze haben. Das ist ironisch. Weil Privileg der Abgordneten ursprünglich als Schutz des ganzen Parlamentes hergestellt warden. Damals schützt es Mitglieder des Parlaments vor den Eliten. Man kann sagen, dass die parlamentarische Privileg eine spezielle institutionelle Regelungen auf den Grundsätzen der Demokratie. Im Vergleich mit anderen parlamentarischen Befugnisse, ist es etwas Besonderes, weil es die Abwehrkraft des Parlaments nicht als eine offensive Kraft ist, die das Parlament aktiv ausüben muss. Nach der Erörterung der Stiftung in der Theorie der parlamentarischen Privilegien, diskutiert das Papier über die wichtigsten Elemente der parlamentarischen Privilegien, das Problem an der Praxis der parlamentarischen Privilegien und die Entwicklung der Privilegien . Schließlich erörtet die Dissertation, wie die entsprechenden Privilegien Systeme der chinesischen nationalen Volkskongress verbessert und vervollgekommen warden könne. / This thesis analyses parliamentary privilege. The privilege is an ancient parliamentary power. All of countries that have democratized or will soon have democratized provide them by own constitution. The purpose of the parliamentary privilege is to permit members of the legislature to speech freely and express their opinion of political position, and not worry about retaliation on the basis of political motives. The Parliament formulates itself its own rules of procedure and maintains the discipline of parliament itself and so on, in order to ensure that the parliament can independently, freely discharge of its duties and perform its functions. Parliamentary privilege, however, is often misunderstood by popular who believes that the privilege is the special protection of all of the elites of society. That is ironic, because privilege was originally produced as a whole of the protection of Parliament, and it protected members of parliament from the elites at that time. It may be said that parliamentary privilege is a special institutional arrangements based on the principles of democracy. Compared with other parliamentary powers, it is special because it is the defensive power of Parliament rather than an offensive power which the parliament must proactively exercise. After studying on the foundation in the theory of parliamentary privilege, the paper comprehensively discusses on the main elements of parliamentary privilege, the problems at the practice of parliamentary privilege and the development of privilege. Finally, it is to argument how to improve and perfect the relevant privilege systems of Chinese National People’s Congress.

The thesis in question is titled “Readjusting Orthodoxy”. It constitutes a discourse in UK constitutional law although legal theoretic, historical, politicial, philosophical, and EU-related complementary themes are also present. It is founded upon, and driven by, two fundamental, inter-related premises. First, that it is the orthodox reading of the UK Constitution which best describes and explains the present constitutional arrangement: the UK Parliament is a sovereign institution sitting at the apex of the UK Constitution and vested with the right to make and unmake any law whatsoever. In the second place, that, notwithstanding the above, this very reading of the UK Constitution is currently deficient in terms of internal cohesion, is plagued by ingrained anachronistic dogmas and enjoys only a limited adaptability. From these premises emerges a third proposition; namely, that the UK constitutional discourse as a whole would stand to lose greatly should alternative constitutional theories that are less suited to describe and explain the current constitutional arrangement replace the orthodox reading of the Constitution by exploiting these conspicuous drawbacks. Thus, the present treatise argues that the orthodox reading should after critical evaluation be readjusted in the various ways to be proposed so as to be rendered coherent, consistent, impervious to the numerous challenges it currently faces and, ultimately, capable of continuing to offer the canonical account of the ever-changing UK Constitution.