Category: International law
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Daniella Lock: Questions Regarding Judicial Deference in R (Campaign Against the Arms Trade) v Secretary of State for International Trade
Last week, the High Court rejected a claim for judicial review, brought by the NGO ‘Campaign Against the Arms Trade’ against the Secretary of State for International Trade, regarding the exporting of arms to Saudi Arabia. The judges presiding over the case were Lord Justice Burnett and Mr Justice Haddon-Cave. It is argued here that…
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Byron Karemba: Provision of Abortion Services, the Territorial Constitution and the Supreme Court
Introduction Should UK citizens ordinarily resident in one of the constituent parts of the UK be treated equally in regards to essential social services when they are in a different part of the country? In one sense, the appeal in R (A and B) v Secretary of State for Health in which the Supreme Court…
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Jean-Pierre Gauci and Robert McCorquodale: Brexit and Transitional Provisions: International Law Can Assist
In a recent statement, The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, highlighted the need for transitional measures to be agreed soon in the Brexit discussions. He is reported as stating: I am confident we can do a Brexit deal which puts jobs and prosperity first, that reassures employers that they will still be able to access the…
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Eirik Bjorge: The Dualist System of the English Constitution and the Victorian Acquis
The Supreme Court in Miller set out the model that ‘the dualist system is a necessary corollary of Parliamentary sovereignty’ (para 57), or in the words of Campbell McLachlan in his admirable Foreign Relations Law, cited by the Supreme Court: If treaties have no effect within domestic law, Parliament’s legislative supremacy within its own…
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Patrick O’Brien: All for Want of a Metaphor: Miller and the Nature of EU Law
The judgments in Miller highlight the fact that the common law has never managed to arrive at a satisfactory intellectual framework for European law. I will focus first on Lord Reed’s dissent. On Lord Reed’s account, the situation is simpler than anyone who had observed UK and EU law for the past 45 years could have imagined.…
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Angela Patrick: Blushes and Torture: Act of State Doctrine and Justiciability
In a week when Supreme Court watchers expected to dissect the Brexit judgment, the Justices instead handed down their long awaited decision in the joined cases of Belhaj & Ors v Straw & Ors; Rahmatullah (No 1) v Ministry of Defence & Ors [2017] UKSC 3. These appeals both involved unsuccessful attempts to strike out…
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Mikolaj Barczentewicz: Uses and Misuses of the Rule of Recognition in Miller
The jurisprudential concept of the rule of recognition featured several times during the Miller hearings at the Supreme Court. In this short note, I discuss three uses of the concept of the rule of recognition during the Miller hearings and propose one other way in which the concept is relevant to Miller, that was not…
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Richard Clayton QC: New Directions for Article 10: Strasbourg Reverses the Supreme Court in Kennedy
The Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v Charity Commission was striking from many points of view. Mr Kennedy was a journalist frustrated by the way the Commission handled his allegations concerning George Galloway MP’s controversial Iraq charity, the Miriam Appeal. He applied for disclosure of documents under the Freedom of Information Act, arguing that a…
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Robert Craig: Report of Proceedings: Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, Supreme Court, Day 3
Introduction This post aims to summarise the highlights of the Supreme Court (SC) hearing on Day 3 (7 December 2016) of the hearings in the Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union case. As mentioned in previous posts, and as with the reports on the High Court (HC), this report will not…
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Robert Craig: Report of Proceedings: Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, Supreme Court, Day 2
Introduction This post aims to summarise the highlights of the Supreme Court hearing on 6 December 2016. As mentioned yesterday, as with the reports on the High Court, this report will not be comprehensive. This is because those with the most interest in the case will have watched online or read the transcript. There is…