Monthly Archives: November 2011
Gordon Anthony: Axa – A view from Northern Ireland
It is a little over 6 weeks since the Supreme Court delivered its long-awaited ruling in Axa General Insurance v Lord Advocate [2011] UKSC 46. Although the ruling was of primary importance to Scottish law – see, for instance, its … Continue reading
Filed under Devolution, Northern Ireland, Scotland
Phil Larkin and Alexander Horne: report on October’s parliamentary privilege seminar
A seminar on parliamentary privilege, held jointly by the Study of Parliament Group and the UK Constitutional Law Group, took place in Parliament on 12 October, with talks given by three noted authorities: David Howarth (Department of Law, University of … Continue reading
Filed under Events, UK Parliament
Stephen Tierney: The Scotland Bill before the Scottish Parliament
The Scotland Bill, which intends to implement the Calman Committee report , is currently before the Scottish Parliament for consideration under the Sewel convention. It is being assessed by a specially convened Committee of the Parliament which is considering whether … Continue reading
Filed under Devolution, Scotland, UK Parliament
Derek O’Brien and Se-shauna Wheatle: The Commonwealth Caribbean and the Uses and Abuses of Comparative Constitutional Law
The practice of judges engaging in a transnational judicial conversation about constitutional rights, by referring to the judgments of international human rights courts and other constitutional courts when interpreting their own domestic Bills of Rights, has been commented upon in … Continue reading
Filed under Comparative law, Constitutional reform, Human rights
News: Ministry of Justice consultation on judicial appointments and diversity
The Ministry of Justice has this morning published a consultation paper “Appointments and Diversity: A Judiciary for the 21st Century” (CP19/2011). It seeks views on transferring the Lord Chancellor’s decision-making powers to the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales … Continue reading
Filed under Constitutional reform, Judiciary
Christine Bell: Bills of Rights and Devolution: From the Universal to the Particular.
‘To produce one Bill of rights may be regarded as a misfortune. To produce eight, looks like carelessness’. This blog picks up on Nicholas Barber’s blog of September 11, 2011. There he sketched the complicated options for taking a human … Continue reading
Filed under Constitutional reform, Devolution, Human rights, Northern Ireland, Scotland, UK Parliament, Wales
Seminar: Turkey’s New Constitution
Thursday, 17 November 2011, 7:00-8:30 pm, Room U8, Tower 1, LSE, Portugal Street, London. WC2A 2AE LSE Contemporary Turkish Studies Conference “Turkey’s New Constitution” Speakers: James Dingemans Q.C. (Barrister (3 Hare Court Chambers) & Deputy High Court Judge), Levent Gönenç (Professor of … Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Paul Bernal: To block or not to block is not the question…
On the 26th October, the subject of website blocking was in the news in two apparently very different ways. Firstly, as a result of the ‘Newzbin2’ court case in July ([2011] EWHC 1981 (Ch)), BT was given 14 days to … Continue reading
Filed under Human rights, Judiciary
Peter C. Oliver: Constitutional Conventions in the Canadian Courts
Most constitutional law textbooks across the Commonwealth include in the section on constitutional conventions lengthy extracts from the Canadian case, Re Amendment of the Constitution of Canada, often referred to as the Patriation Reference. Given that constitutional conventions are enforced … Continue reading
Filed under Comparative law, Constitutional reform
UKCLG blog editors
Constitutional Law Group
