Parliamentary sovereignty (also called parliamentary supremacy or legislative supremacy) is a concept in the constitutional law of some parliamentary democracies. It holds that the legislative body has absolute sovereignty and is supreme over all other government institutions, including executive or judicial bodies. It also holds that the legislative body may change or repeal any previous legislation and so it is not bound by written law (in some cases, even a constitution) or by precedent. In some countries, parliamentary sovereignty may be contrasted with separation of powers, which limits the legislature's scope often to general law-making, and judicial review, where laws passed by the legislature may be declared invalid in certain circumstances. Many states have sovereign legislatures, including the United Kingdom, Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Barbados, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Israel, and the Solomon Islands.
In political philosophy, the concept is also called parliamentarianism or parliamentarism.