The UKCLA Blog
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Events: Global South Network Lecture/ Call for Abstracts
SEA, SURF, SAND: THE CARIBBEAN COURT OF JUSTICE’S DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACHES TO CARIBBEAN CONSTITUTIONALISM DURING THE GLOBAL SOUTH NETWORK (GSN) JUDGES GUEST LECTURE SERIES The Global South Network (GSN) invites you to the online guest lecture titled “Sea, Surf, Sand: The Caribbean Court of Justice’s Developmental Approaches to Caribbean Constitutionalism” by the Honourable Justice Peter A…
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Francesca Jackson: The Oath of Allegiance, and the Battle for Independence
In the UK and Commonwealth, an oath of allegiance is a promise to be loyal to the monarch, their heirs and successors. Also known as ‘swearing in’, it is pledged in various contexts, including at the beginning of a Parliament and when government ministers assume office. The allegiance is pledged to the monarch as the…
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Richard Brant and Lauren Butler: Reform UK’s Plans for “Getting Tough on Illegal Immigration”: From Legal Reset to Sunset
On 26 August 2025 Nigel Farage (Leader of Reform UK) and Zia Yusuf (now Head of Policy at Reform UK) unveiled their plan titled, ‘Operation Restoring Justice’. Key points from the plan were also reiterated at the Next Step Conference on 05 September 2025. Reform UK address the topic of immigration in their plan, adding…
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Events: Global South Network Guest Lecture/Public Law Call for Editors/Centre for Constitutions in Context Inaugural Lecture/ Book Launch
THE GLOBAL SOUTH NETWORK (GSN) NORTH-SOUTH JUDICIAL DIALOGUE II (ONLINE) THE HELLENIC COUNCIL OF STATE (THE SUPREME ADMINISTRATIVE COURT OF GREECE) AND ITS POSITION IN THE EUROPEAN LEGAL ORDER DURING THE GLOBAL SOUTH NETWORK (GSN) JUDGES GUEST LECTURE SERIES The Global South Network (GSN) invites you to its second North-South Judicial Dialogue. Honourable Justice Michail Pikramenos,…
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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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Jonathan Collinson: From Learning to Lawyering: When Can Political Accountability Have Legal Consequences?
The responsibility for holding the government to account for its failings is the core constitutional role of a range of ‘watchdog’ bodies outside of Parliament, such as inspectorates, commissioners, public inquiries, independent reviews, and ombudsmen. Accountability is seen as a tool to make and keep governments, agencies and individual officials effective in delivering on their…
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Paul F Scott: The power to do what exactly? MI6’s functional vires
On 31 July, the final day of Trinity term, and so of the legal year, there was published by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal an OPEN judgment in a case entitled A Complainant v The Secret Intelligence Service (‘the MI6 case’). In recent years the IPT has become a much more visible contributor to the legal landscape, and…
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Gareth Evans: The Devolution of the Crown Estate in Wales
On 22 July 2025, the Crown Estate (Wales) Bill passed unopposed through report stage in the House of Lords. The Bill, which seeks to devolve the management of the Crown Estate in Wales, was introduced as a Private Members’ Bill in the Lords by the former leader of Plaid Cymru, Lord Wigley. This is by…
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David Erdos: How Exposed? The Information Commissioner’s Office and the Afghan Spreadsheet Data Breach
On 17 August 2023 the Ministry of Defence (MoD) put the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on broad notice about the devastating failure of data protection that is now generally known as the Afghan data breach (although sadly there have been many others). This involved the illegal release of some 33,000 lines of gravely sensitive personal spreadsheet data which put almost 100,000 people – up…
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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…