Category: Constitutional Law
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Francesca Jackson: The Oath of Allegiance, and the Battle for Independence
In the UK and Commonwealth, an oath of allegiance is a promise to be loyal to the monarch, their heirs and successors. Also known as ‘swearing in’, it is pledged in various contexts, including at the beginning of a Parliament and when government ministers assume office. The allegiance is pledged to the monarch as the…
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Paolo Sandro: Parliamentary democracy under the veil of secrecy: the Afghan leak super-injunction case as a bonfire of constitutional principles
Introduction On Tuesday last week it emerged that a mind-boggling data breach by the UK government – and the momentous policy decisions taken in its wake – had been kept a secret from all but a handful of people across the three institutions of the state for nearly two years. In a nutshell, in August…
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Ting Xu: The Legal Fiction of State Neutrality: Rethinking Accountability in Disability Home Adaptations
How should the state be held to account when it funds and organises essential services—but then denies responsibility for their failure? This post examines that question through the lens of disability-related home adaptations in the UK. It explores how the legal and administrative structures surrounding the Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) scheme allow local authorities to…
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Event: A Parliamentarian’s Guide to the Unwritten Constitution
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Stephen Tierney: The Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024: Necessary remedy or unwarranted interference with judicial independence?
For the first time, by way of the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act (“the Act”), Parliament has legislated to quash criminal convictions. In this post I will argue that, no matter how understandable, indeed laudable, the intention behind this legislation, in its haste to offer a speedy and comprehensive correction to mass injustice, Parliament has crossed…
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Se-shauna Wheatle and Roger Masterman: The Legal and Political Dimensions of Unwritten Constitutional Norms and Principles
*Editors’ Note: This post is part of the ‘Unwritten Constitutional Norms and Principles Blog Series’* Unwritten constitutional principles supply much of the foundation – or ‘hidden wiring’ – of the UK constitution. As Lord Reed has recently recognised, the constitution relies on numerous ‘understandings, generally tacit, about how power should be exercised’. Constitutional form and…
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Seána Glennon: The Role of Deliberative Minipublics in Enhancing Democracy in Canada
*Editors’ note: This post is part of the ‘Unwritten Constitutional Norms and Principles Blog Series’* Constitutional structures generally leave space for institutional innovations that can enhance the democratic process. One such innovation, embraced by a variety of countries around the world, is the deliberative minipublic. Experimentation with incorporating deliberative minipublics into the modern democratic process began…
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Joanne Murray: Administrative and Citizen Interpretations of Unwritten Constitutional Principles
*Editors’ Note: This post is part of the ‘Unwritten Constitutional Norms and Principles Blog Series’* Introduction Who gets to interpret and articulate unwritten constitutional principles (UCPs) or constitutional silences? In answering that question, we often assume that the key institutional actors are either the courts and Parliament (or both, depending on one’s position). However, such…
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Hayley Hooper: Historical Origins of the ‘Principle of Legality’ in British Public Law
*Editors’ Note: This post is part of the ‘Unwritten Constitutional Norms and Principles Blog Series’* In 2021 the then Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland QC MP cited the principle of legality as an example of an aspect of public law that might ‘take on a life of [its] own, and lead to the courts overreaching.’ In…