Category: European Union
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Philip Allott: UK/EU Withdrawal Agreement: A Legal Speculation
Without any inside information, and with only the small amount of information publicly available, the following is a personal speculation about the legal context of the UK/EU agreement that is currently being negotiated. (Disclaimer: This is the most complicated legal situation that I have come across in sixty years of professional involvement with the law.…
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Robert Craig and Gavin Phillipson: Could the ‘Meaningful Vote’ End up in Court?
One of the most controversial issues during the passage of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (‘EUWA’) was the so-called ‘meaningful vote’, which parliamentarians hoped would give the Commons a real say over any ‘deal’ reached by the Government with the EU (see previously on this blog posts by Alison Young and Jack Simson Caird).…
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Jack Simson Caird: Brexit and the Meaningful Vote: Down the Procedural Raab-it Hole?
Brexit has a knack for producing constitutional mountains out of procedural molehills. Last Wednesday, the House of Commons Procedure Committee published a letter from the Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab along with a Government Memorandum on the Government’s views on how the procedural arrangements for the meaningful vote in the Commons agreed in the EU (Withdrawal)…
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Jack Simson Caird: Taking Back Control: Brexit, Parliament and the Rule of Law
Over the next six months of the Brexit process, the UK Parliament will make a number of decisions that will have a profound impact on the UK’s constitution and its legal systems. In a Bingham Centre for the Rule Law Report published this week, The Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration: A Preliminary Rule of…
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Robert Brett Taylor and Adelyn L. M. Wilson: Seeking and Implementing a Referral on Revocability of Article 50 Following Wightman
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019. The British Government’s draft withdrawal agreement – the so-called Chequers Deal or Plan – has been subject to critique on both sides of the Brexit debate within the UK and was largely dismissed as unworkable by EU leaders on 20 September 2018. The…
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Colin Murray: Brexit and the “Constitutional Integrity” of the United Kingdom
Something no Prime Minister could contemplate The Foreign Office records regarding the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 must be amongst the most regularly requested papers held at the National Archives. One file, FO 608/65, is part of the herculean effort to redraw the map of Europe after the First World War. It recounts the efforts…
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James Segan: The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018: Ten Key Implications for UK Law and Lawyers
On 26 June 2018, after nearly a year of deliberation by Parliament, the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (the “Act”) received royal assent. It is a statute of profound importance to the legal systems of the UK. This post seeks briefly to summarise the purpose and architecture of the Act and to outline ten key…
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Solon Solomon: The Chequers Agreement: Brexit and the Infeasibility of Judicial and Legal Independence
The Chequers agreement reshapes the UK Brexit position. By formally throwing its lot behind a soft Brexit, Theresa May’s government has made a point. It is unclear how this stance was influenced by the House of Lords voting in favour of such a soft Brexit some months ago or by the City entrepreneurs voicing their…
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Anurag Deb: The Unquiet Irish Border Problem: Implications in the Aftermath of the Withdrawal Act
On 26 June 2018, the hitherto hotly-debated European Union (Withdrawal) Bill became an Act of Parliament (“2018 Act”) after a tennis match of amendments and counter-amendments between Parliament’s two Houses. Much has been said by leading academics about the contents of the 2018 Act both during its stormy passage through Parliament and after its enactment…
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Stephen Tierney: The Legislative Supremacy of Government
At the same time as Parliament prepares to ‘take back control’ from Brussels, the executive is in fact accruing to itself further control over the legislative process. In this post I address a number of trends – only some of which are a direct consequence of the unique circumstances of Brexit – which suggest a…