[dragonwriter]

> We've also been around for longer than anyone else with a modern democracy

No, we haven't. In fact, we copied it largely from the UK. (We didn't like the fact that as a colony we didn't get representation in the national legislature or the full range of rights citizens in the UK itself had, but, hey, the US does the same thing. Initially, and still partially, even to it's capital district.

We've got the oldest surviving written Constitution, sure, but that's a different issue.

[why_only_15]

The US has a very different system in a lot of ways. The UK doesn't have a formal constitution, its executive is subject to the legislature in a way it isn't in the US, one house, etc. The UK is a parliamentary democracy and the US is a republic. Also, the UK wasn't a democracy in any meaningful sense in 1776. The History Of Parliament Online is a very useful resource (https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/research/constitue...). Out of some 6 million people in 1776 that lived in Britain, approximately 100,000 had the right to vote, most of which were in a small segment (i.e. the ability to vote was highly geographically concentrated).

[dragonwriter]

> The UK doesn't have a formal constitution

The UK doesn't have a single written document that lays out the Constitution, but I wouldn't necessarily call the Constitution informal.

> its executive is subject to the legislature in a way it isn't

True.

> one house,

The UK still has a bicameral, not unicameral, legislature, though it now has priority in the lower house (unlike the US, which retains greater power in the undemocratic upper house, a feature it copied from the UK which has since shed it.)

> The UK is a parliamentary democracy and the US is a republic.

The UK is a representative democracy with a ceremonial monarch and the US is a representative democracy without a ceremonial monarch; the absence of a monarch is the sum total of the difference indicated by “republic”.

> Also, the UK wasn't a democracy in any meaningful sense in 1776.

Neither, though, was the US in 1776, or 1789, for much the same reason: the colonies had imported and retained (in some cases added to) the kinds of restrictions on the franchise found in the UK, and kept them past the revolution and Constitution, which left decision of who could vote to the States (and, while not in the federal government, also often had even more stringent property, etc., requirements for office holders.)

[wahern]

> Also, the UK wasn't a democracy in any meaningful sense in 1776

And the U.S. was? Much like the UK, the franchise was reserved to a subset of land freeholders. Only about 10-20% of the US population was eligible to vote. (http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-8-1-b-w...)

The UK did and still does have a written constitution, it's just not entirely written, and what's written is spread across multiple documents--the Magna Carta being one of the obvious ones. The US is not that different. Much of the US Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, was copied verbatim from the written parts of the English constitution. And even conservative American jurists who reject Substantive Due Process regularly recognize unwritten constitutional rules and norms, especially those deriving from English constitutional norms.

Aside from federalism (where states maintained some sovereignty), the most fundamental constitutional differences between the US and the UK relate to judicial review and parliamentary supremacy. But it didn't become clear until 1803 in Marbury v. Madison that the US would follow a different path. If Congress was the final arbiter of legislative constitutionality (as many believed in 1789, and some conservatives argue to this day), there would be little if any functional difference between the US and UK constitutional systems. Indeed, now that US Senators are directly elected, but for Marbury v Madison even federalism would be little different than UK's so-called devolution. Japan nominally has judicial review, but their supreme court has zero inclination to strike down legislation so in practice the Japanese legislature has similar constitutional powers as the UK parliament.

[ed_balls]

> Also, the UK wasn't a democracy in any meaningful sense in 1776.

One could argue that UK is still not a democracy now. House of lords, Queen's hard and soft power, traditions, no legally binding referendum that can be done without government or parliament.

[nradov]

When the US Constitution was adopted the UK monarch still had enough power that it couldn't reasonably be considered a democracy. The exact point when the UK became a modern democracy is open to debate as power gradually devolved from the monarch to Parliament, but US democracy has absolutely been around longer. There's no legitimate historical debate on that.

And very little of the US governmental system was copied from the UK. A parliamentary system is just totally different from what we have.

[arminiusreturns]

Yeah, Madison researched every form of government in history, including native American government systems, as the backdrop for his constitutional work. To say we just copied the UK is not a true assessment in any sense.

[throw0101a]

> We've got the oldest surviving written Constitution, sure, but that's a different issue.

According to this, San Marino is still using their 1600 constitution:

* https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/oldest-constitutions-sti...

There is some debate on whether it counts though.

[ameister14]

I'd argue that the UK wasn't a modern democracy until the Parliament Acts allowed for the Commons to override the House of Lords.

[int_19h]

UK doesn't have proper separation of powers to this day, due to parliamentary sovereignty.