Category: International law
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Ciaran White: Northern Ireland Workers’ Rights and the Draft Withdrawal Agreement: The Quasi-Constitutional Entrenchment of EU-derived Labour Law Rights
Northern Ireland employment law is a devolved issue and its statute book has always been largely distinct and separate from that applicable in GB. This always had the potential to allow for NI-specific protections of EU-derived labour law rights post-Brexit, as I have suggested on other occasions. Had there been political consensus in the Northern…
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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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Sam Fowles: The Trade Bill 2018: A Step Towards Parliamentary Control of Treaty Making?
The Trade Bill 2017-19, currently undergoing its second reading in the House of Lords, marks a significant step in the evolution of the UK’s constitution in that it gives Parliament a greater say in the making of international trade agreements (“ITA”) than ever before. Constitutional law and international trade are rarely spoken of in the…
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Francis Young: Parliament and Taking Back Control: A Precedent from the Maastricht Debates
This post considers whether it is a convention of the British constitution that Parliament cannot direct the executive in the making of treaties. The context, of course, is the current tussle over whether the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill should be amended to allow the House of Commons a “meaningful vote” on the outcome of the…
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Azadeh Chalabi: Added Values of National Human Rights Action Planning for the UK in the Age of Brexit
In the age of Brexit when divisions of different kinds (cultural, ethnic, religious, geographical and class, etc.) come into sharp focus, even if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights can be maintained (with the recent House of Lords amendment to retain the Charter), significant concerns can be raised as to a potential reduction of fundamental…
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Mark Bennett: The Ever-Expanding ‘Emergency’ Exception: Syria, the War Powers Convention, and the Bypassing of Prior Parliamentary Debate
Introduction In a recent post on this blog, Veronika Fikfak and Hayley Hooper outlined the implications of the UK’s military intervention in Syria, on 13 April 2018, vis-à-vis the so-called War Powers Convention. For present purposes, it suffices to briefly remind readers that the broad acceptance of this nascent constitutional development was underscored by its…
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Veronika Fikfak and Hayley J. Hooper: Whither the War Powers Convention? What Next for Parliamentary Control of Armed Conflict after Syria?
A. Introduction and Background On Friday 13 April 2018 the Royal Air Force participated in air strikes (together with the United States and France) to degrade the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons capability and to deter further chemical attacks. This intervention in Syria was not authorised by the UN Security Council, nor was the involvement of…
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Philip Allott: The EU Legal System Is Not a Thing You Can Leave
The level of ignorance that surrounds the effort to withdraw the UK from membership of the European Union can only be justified by the complexity of the underlying legal situation which is as complicated as any legal situation can be. It involves the interaction of four different legal orders. National law. EU law. World Trade…
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Alison Young: Benkharbouche and the Future of Disapplication
Last week, Lord Sumption delivered the majority decision of the Supreme Court on Benkharbouche v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs: Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Libya v Janah. The case would have been heard in December of last year, but for the small matter of Miller, which caused…
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Cormac Mac Amhlaigh: Can Brexit Be Stopped under EU Law?
Ominous clouds are gathering and the terrain underfoot increasingly resembles a quagmire on the Brexiteers’ ‘sunlit uplands’. The latest reminders that the reality will be significantly different from their utopia of a prosperous global Buccaneering Britain has come in the form of a trade dispute between the U.S. and a Canadian aircraft manufacturer which could…