Category: law-making
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Thomas Horsley: Legislative Design in the Shadow of the UK Internal Market Act: The Food Price Cap (Scotland) Bill
The Scottish Government’s proposals to introduce statutory price caps on essential food items provide a new test of the practical effects of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 (UKIMA) on devolved policymaking. This post examines its initial approach to navigating the UKIMA, outlined in a public consultation published on 1 September 2026. The Scottish…
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Yossi Nehushtan and Faye Thomas: Retrospective Rule Making, the Rule of Law, and UK Immigration Policy
In this post we differentiate between two types of retrospective rule making (RRM): RRM in the strong sense and RRM in the weak sense. We then argue that both types of RRM may violate the rule of law to a similar extent, and that both can be morally indefensible, and potentially illegal. We conclude by…
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Nathan Whetton: Legislating against concealing identity at protests
The Crime and Policing Bill was introduced to Parliament on 25 February 2025. The Bill builds on the Labour party manifesto commitment to “take back our streets”, and contains a wide-ranging scope of provisions aiming at tackling violence, antisocial behaviour and enhancing public confidence in the criminal justice system. Having passed through the Commons in June this…
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Stephen Tierney: The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill – a dangerous licence for executive law-making
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is now in the House of Lords. After months of frantic activity in the Commons there is an opportunity for Parliament to draw breath and for the upper house to consider this measure carefully. It already has two critical committee reports published by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and…
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David Sugarman: The Politics of Judicial Decision-Making in the UK’s Top Court: Lessons from the Pinochet Case
Does the judge who hears a case affect the outcome and, particularly, in the U.K.’s top court? This is a question that has received increasing attention of late. In this blog post, I utilise my research on the behind-the-scenes proceedings in the Pinochet case (1998-99) to address this question, stressing the role of the judges’ personal values,…
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Mark K Heatley: The Disadvantages of Local Legislation
The term Private Acts of Parliament (PA) is widely used to include local Acts, that benefit organizations such as local authorities or authorize major infrastructure projects and are often of limited geographical extent, or personal Acts that benefit individuals. This post considers the reasons for the decline in the enaction of Local Acts of Parliament…
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Stevie Martin: Differentiation in dying: Can limiting assisted suicide to the terminally ill be justified?
With the second reading of Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill fast approaching, debate persists as to whether limiting eligibility to terminally ill adults could be successfully challenged as discriminatory under Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) before the domestic courts and/or the European Court of Human Rights…
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Philip Murray: Assisted Suicide and the ECHR: Some Further Thoughts
My recent post on Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which seeks to legalise assisted suicide for terminally ill adults and so modify the blanket ban provided by s. 2 of the Suicide Act 1961, has attracted some attention. There I raised questions as to the compatibility of the Bill with articles…
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Philip Murray: Looking down the slippery slope: Can assisted suicide be restricted to the terminally ill?
Kim Leadbeater has recently introduced a Private Member’s Bill in the House of Commons which seeks to legalise assisted suicide for the terminally ill. Despite its second reading being scheduled for 29 November, the text of the Bill is, somewhat remarkably given its significance, still to be published. Yet the outline of Leadbeater’s proposals has…
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Madeline Gleeson & Theodore Konstadinides: The UK’s Rwanda policy and Lessons from Australia
In November 2023, the Supreme Court of the UK dealt a critical blow to the government’s proposal to send certain asylum seekers to the Republic of Rwanda. In AAA and Others v the Home Secretary, the Court ruled that removal to Rwanda would be unlawful because that country was not, at the time, a ‘safe country’. The government…