Grundnorm means a fundamental norm, rule or order that forms the elementary principle for a legal system. It is the foundational law laid down by those who were a part of the earliest legal systems. A grundnorm should be acceptable and applicable to everyone at every times. The purpose of grundnorm is to ensure the deep rooted values of righteousness and fairness are preserved among the society. Thus, this would result into maintenance of harmonious social arrangement. Grundnorm entails the idea of justice, thereby it earns the ability to decide the soundness of any legislation. Any legislation has to be put under the test of its conformity to the grundnorm in order to determine whether it is a capable of implementation upon the people. If it diverges from the fundamental law then it is open to be challenged for being illegal, unfair, oppressive, arbitrary etc. and hence may be declared unjust. This ultimately may repeal the legislation. Hence the concept of a grundnorm portrays it as the omnipotent law. This paper attempts to determine if constitution of a nation state can be called as its grundnorm. The comparative study of India and UK is done through research so as to find out what is grundnorm in the legal systems of these two nations. Also the paper discusses various instances which aim to check efficacy of the grundnorm in today’s advanced world. This paper tries to find out whether the grundnorm which was recognized in ancient times is effective enough in modern legal system as well. After passage of centuries and with changing times does the grundnorm lose their authority or get changed are some of the prime concerns addressed in this paper.
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