Category: Parliamentary sovereignty
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Anurag Deb and Nicholas Kilford: Conditioning the UK Parliament’s Power to Legislate for a Devolved Part of the UK: Part II – Some Challenges Posed by Northern Ireland
Introduction In its judgments in Continuity Bill and Treaty Incorporation, the Supreme Court identified what we describe in the first part of this post as the ‘conditioning limitation’. The purpose of that first part was to demonstrate how the conditioning limitation potentially threatens otherwise constitutionally innocuous or unexceptional exercises of devolved legislative power. Although those…
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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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Anurag Deb and Nicholas Kilford: Conditioning the UK Parliament’s power to legislate for a devolved part of the UK: Part I – The Climate Change Act (Northern Ireland) 2022
Introduction The Climate Change Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 (‘CCA’) is, from a constitutional perspective, a fairly unassuming, if far-reaching, exercise of devolved legislative power. It is an example of a devolved part of the UK seizing the opportunity the devolution framework provides to ‘design policies and take public spending decisions that more closely align with…
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Sanjit Nagi: A Road to Nowhere: Reforming the European Convention on Human Rights
Over the last few weeks criticism of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR/the Convention) and suggestions that the United Kingdom (U.K) should attempt to reform the supranational instrument, and by extension the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA 1998), have dramatically intensified. Interestingly, calls for reform have not just come from the conservative side of…
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Sanjit Nagi: “A Mandate for Change!”: Popular Sovereignty and the Labour Party
The recent general election saw the Labour Party being elected with a majority of 171 seats in Parliament. The following morning, in his first speech as Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer claimed the nation had given the Labour Party a “clear mandate”. Similarly, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, stated the British people…
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Jamie McGowan: The Nobile Officium and Public Law: An Undertapped Resource?
Joanna Cherry KC MP has suggested (here and in parliament), somewhat indirectly, that the nobile officium of the Court of Session might, insofar as it “exists to give remedies where there would otherwise be none”, be exercised to limit the effect of the provisions of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill 2023-24. Notably,…
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Ronan Cormacain: What’s wrong with the Safety of Rwanda Bill?
The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill was introduced into Parliament on 7 December 2023. According to its long title, its purpose is to facilitate “the removal of certain migrants” to Rwanda. Without even looking at the international law dimensions, the Bill contains constitutionally troubling provisions. Firstly, it purports to legislatively state “facts”. Secondly, it usurps the judicial function by purporting…
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Adam Tucker: The Rwanda Policy, Legal Fiction(s), and Parliament’s Legislative Authority
Last week the Supreme Court (in R (AAA) v Home Secretary) found the UK government’s policy to send asylum applicants to Rwanda unlawful on the grounds that “removal … to Rwanda would expose them to a real risk of ill-treatment by reason of refoulement” [149]. In response, the Prime Minister announced that the government intends…
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Mohamed Moussa: The ‘Absent Word’ Canon and Asymmetrical Sovereignty
Introduction: The Supreme Court’s Textual Fidelity The UK Supreme Court (UKSC) recently issued its unanimous judgment which found the draft Scottish Independence Referendum Bill to be outside the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament. While the facts of this case are distinctively different from previous Scottish cases, a common theme remains in the Court’s insistence on ‘ordinary meaning of words’ as…