Category: Constitutional Accountability
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Francesca Jackson: Princesses, the Privy Purse, and Parliament: Constitutional Issues Raised by the Royal Residences Report
Following the release of the Report by the National Audit Office (‘NAO’) (‘the Report’) on royal residences, it has emerged that King Charles pays the rent on properties occupied by his nieces, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie. The properties are provided through The Royal Household, thus it is presumed that Charles pays the rent to The Household…
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Conor Casey: The Attorney’s Bridle: The Constitutional Convention Disciplining the Attorney General’s Discretionary Powers
The Attorney General is one of the most powerful and influential officers in the British Constitution. They are the chief adviser of the Crown on points of law and the chief counsel for the government in legal proceedings. They also have an important role in the machinery of criminal law enforcement in England & Wales and a wide…
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Cassandra Somers-Joce: A New Chapter for Governmental Candour? The Public Office (Accountability) Bill
The Public Office (Accountability) Bill was introduced into the House of Commons on 16 September 2025. It gives effect to the Labour Party’s 2024 Manifesto commitment to introduce a ‘Hillsborough Law’ which will ‘place a legal duty of candour on public servants and authorities and provide legal aid for victims of disasters or state-related deaths’. As the Government’s ‘Duty of…
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Event: A Parliamentarian’s Guide to the Unwritten Constitution
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Terence Daintith: Attacking the Attorney General: Some constitutional and administrative context
Identifying the rules and practices that should properly be regarded as part of our flexible and uncodified constitution is nowhere more difficult than in relation to the internal workings of the executive. At one time this difficulty was normally attributed to a culture of secrecy within government that kept information about its internal organisation out of…
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Stephanie Reynolds: Elon Musk: Stretching or Snapping an Elastic Constitution?
Elon Musk has recently utilised his extensive platform as owner of social media site X to intervene in British politics. He has labelled the UK Prime Minister ‘two-tier Keir’ in relation to allegations of police bias against white protestors during the 2024 riots, and after the Government announced changes to inheritance tax, declared that ‘Britain…
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Mike Gordon: Labour’s Ministerial Code and Political Standards Reform
On 6th November, Prime Minister Keir Starmer published his (long awaited) revised version of the Ministerial Code. A written statement in Parliament by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, accompanying the release of the updated text suggested that ‘[t]he new code will be instrumental in setting out the high standards that the…
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Sonia Anaid Cruz Dávila: Between Arbitrary & Justifiable Discretion: What Does It Tell Us About the Constitutionality of Populism?
With the upcoming presidential elections in the United States, fears that Donald Trump may return to the White House have reinforced the ongoing academic debate about the possible dangers of populism. Given the enormous amount of scholarly literature on the topic, however, it may not always be clear what the distinctive contribution of constitutional lawyers and theorists may…
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Daniel Skeffington and Philippe Lagassé: Principle, Practice, and Prerogative
*Editors’ Note: This post is part of the ‘Unwritten Constitutional Norms and Principles Blog Series’* It remains commonplace, both in political and public law discourse, to describe the Royal Prerogative as archaic or anachronistic. Executive power in the United Kingdom may begin with the Crown, but even the most venerated constitutional historians have long thought ‘the Crown’ is a convenient…
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Alan Greene: Agonistic Constitutionalism and Accountability
*Editors’ note – this post is part of a series on ‘Contemporary Challenges for Constitutional Accountability’. The other posts in the series will be available here.* From the rise of so-called ‘illiberal democracies’ following the fall of the Berlin Wall, through the hasty jettisoning of human rights by democracies in the aftermath of 9/11, to the…