Category: Constitutional change
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Andrew Le Sueur: Finally, separation of powers in Jersey?
The question of separating constitutional powers in Jersey is more complex than it appears. Here’s why. Jersey and Guernsey are unique globally in having constitutions that in the ancient office of Bailiff fuse together the roles of chief justice and presiding officer of their respective courts and parliaments. As I argue, this is further complicated…
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Mike Gordon: A New Britain, A New Constitution? Labour’s Proposals for Constitutional Entrenchment
The Labour Party’s Commission on the UK’s Future has published a report making some bold proposals for constitutional reform. The most striking proposal in A New Britain: Renewing our Democracy and Rebuilding our Economy is to change the UK’s constitutional model in a way which introduces a form of entrenchment into our legal and political system. In essence, this…
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Adam Tucker: Entrenchment, Parliamentary Sovereignty, and the Limited Radicalism of the Brown Report
The publication of the Report of the Commission on the UK’s Future is attracting widespread attention. The centrepiece of its constitutional content is the replacement of the House of Lords with a new second chamber with new composition and a reformed role, which would have particular responsibility for territorial aspects of the constitution (discussed here) and act as guardian…
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Richard Clayton: The Government’s New Proposals for the Human Rights Act; Part One – The Proposals in Outline
The Conservative Party has opposed the HRA root and branch ever since its enactment. Manifesto commitments to overhaul the HRA were made in 2010, 2015, 2017, and 2019. In 2015 Prime Minister, David Cameron, said he was open to the “nuclear option” of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (the ECHR) to ensure…
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Paul Craig: IRAL: The Panel Report and the Government’s Response
The Report of the Independent Review of Administrative Law, IRAL, was made public on 16 March. It stretches to 195 pages in total, although one third of this comprises annexes and the like. This blog considers the Report of the Panel and the government response. The Panel Report The IRAL Panel is refreshingly open and…
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Steven Chaplin: Review of Parliaments and the Pandemic
As the pandemic moves into its second year, the effects on Parliaments, not only as legislating and accountability bodies but as institutions, are becoming more apparent. What began as a series of emergency measures imposed by government, generally supported by all parties, has given way to longer term concerns regarding government accountability and the sidelining…
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Rivka Weill: We the British People Rule: From 1832 to the Present
To anyone who accepts Britain’s parliamentary sovereignty, Brexit should not make sense. How could a nation committed to parliamentary rule find itself bound by a consultative referendum’s result? And after the majority of Parliament had repeatedly opposed Brexit! In “From Earl Grey to Boris Johnson: Brexit and the Anglo-American Constitutional Model,” I reveal that…
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David Kershaw: Revolutionary Amnesia and the Delegated Nature of Prerogative Power
“Left” in the Hands of the Crown The extent to which an exercise of prerogative power can be subject to judicial review, as well as the nature of such review, are umbilically connected to the nature and source of prerogative power. But what is the nature of the prerogative powers exercised by the Crown today—how…
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Theodore Konstadinides, Lee Marsons and Maurice Sunkin: Reviewing Judicial Review: The constitutional importance of the Independent Review of Administrative Law 2020
Last year, the Government committed itself to establishing a Commission on the Constitution, Democracy and Rights, which would consider reform of the UK’s constitutional order, including judicial review and the Human Rights Act 1998. Instead, on 30 July 2020, the Government launched an ostensibly narrower Independent Review of Administrative Law (IRAL) to examine the need…
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Rodney Brazier: Why is Her Majesty’s Government so big?
The curious case of the expanding Government Before they entered government, both Dominic Cummings and Dominic Raab called for massive cuts in the size of the British Government. Raab suggested in 2013 that half of all government departments should be scrapped in order to save money; Cummings argued the following year that the Cabinet should…