Tag: Covid-19
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John Harrington, Erin Thomas and Barbara Hughes-Moore: Is there a Welsh Health Law? Values, Divergence and Devolution after COVID-19
Viruses can move the world and COVID-19 has unquestionably tested the United Kingdom’s constitutional settlement. This is not simply a matter of the generic allocation of powers as between London on the one hand, and Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast on the other. It also concerns the content of substantive law in discrete fields. Lawmakers, practitioners…
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Guy Baldwin: The Pandemic and the First Amendment
Against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic still raging, the US Supreme Court recently weighed in on the interaction between public health measures and the First Amendment to the US Constitution. The Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, imposed, by Executive Order, occupancy limits on houses of worship in designated zones. On 25 November 2020,…
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Jonathan Morgan: Covid-19 and False Imprisonment
The Cambridge Private Law Centre last week hosted its annual Freshfields lecture. Lord Sumption addressed us on “Government by decree—Covid-19 and the Constitution”. This lecture has received considerable media attention and already been mentioned on this blog. (A link to the lecture and a transcript is here.) One of Lord Sumption’s major claims was that…
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Robert Craig: Coronavirus Regulations Case reaches the Court of Appeal – Hearing Dates 29-30 October 2020
Litigation challenging the vires of the Coronavirus Regulations has been rumbling along over recent months. On 6 July 2020, Mr Justice Lewis refused permission (pdf link here) in the Simon Dolan judicial review case – here is a link to that judgment (pdf). Mr Justice Lewis held that the vires claim was ‘unarguable’. The 1984…
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Stuart Wallace: A Triple Threat to the Rule of Law
As I watched Lord Judge’s eloquent defence of the rule of the law in the House of Lords last week, I couldn’t help but feel that, as a nation, the UK is at a crossroads regarding its adherence to the rule of law. A trio of threats to the rule of law present themselves in…
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Leah Trueblood: ‘Following the Science:’ a Legal and Democratic Challenge
During a pandemic, it seems like a good idea for politicians to ‘follow the science.’ But what does this actually mean? The claim that the Government is ‘following the science’ is in many respects laudable, but is it also a convenient way to avoid or limit accountability? Due to a lack of transparency, it is…
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Jack Maxwell and Joe Tomlinson: Model students: why Ofqual has a legal duty to disclose the details of its model for calculating GCSE and A level grades
On 18 March 2020, the UK Government cancelled GCSE and A level exams for students in England. The closure of schools and the need to slow the spread of COVID-19 made exams impracticable. But the Prime Minister confirmed that students would still get ‘the qualifications they need and deserve for their academic career.’ This created…
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Hanna Wilberg: Lockdowns, the principle of legality, and reasonable limits on liberty.
In responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, governments around the world have imposed unprecedented “lockdowns”. They decided, on the advice of public health officials and experts, that this was necessary in order to at least “flatten the curve” of escalating numbers of infections and thus prevent health systems being overwhelmed. This has left many governments scrambling…
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Emilia Cieslak: Getting the timing right- a review of the Leicester lockdown Regulations
The local lockdown in Leicester was announced on the 29th June and began on the 30th, despite the relevant Regulations only coming into force on the 4th July. This post argues that a legal vacuum – even one lasting only a few days – has damaging effects on the Rule of Law and creates problems…
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Ronan Cormacain: “Social Distancing” of Emergency Legislation during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Ordinary legislation is different in its content and method of enactment from emergency legislation. But the risk is that the longer the Covid-19 pandemic continues, the less distinct these two types of law become, and that emergency legislation becomes the new normal. The structural solution proposed to this problem is “social distancing” of emergency legislation…