Tag: Investigatory Powers Tribunal
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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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Daniella Lock: The Third Direction Case Part Two: The Doctrine of Necessary Implication and Uncertainty in National Security Law
Part One of this post presented the background to the ‘Third Direction’ case, which concerns a recently disclosed Government policy to authorise agents of the Security Service (MI5) to participate in criminal conduct, and will will soon be heard in the Court of Appeal. Part One argued that from its the outset the case illustrates…
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Daniella Lock: The ‘Third Direction case’ Part One: Miller (Nos 1 and 2) in the National Security Context?
The ‘Third Direction case’, soon to be brought before the Court of Appeal, concerns the lawfulness of a previously secret national security policy of the UK Government. The policy authorises agents of the Security Service (MI5) to engage in criminal activity, which the claimants allege include the carrying out of torture and murder. Hearings on…
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Hanna Wilberg: The Limits of the Rule of Law’s Demands: Where Privacy International Abandons Anisminic
Statutory ouster of judicial review has long been considered to offend the rule of law. But just what does the rule of law demand in this context, and is ouster really inconsistent with those demands in all circumstances? Some interesting answers to these questions feature in R (Privacy International) v Investigatory Powers Tribunal. At least…
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Mike Gordon: Privacy International, Parliamentary Sovereignty and the Synthetic Constitution
The case of R (Privacy International) v Investigatory Powers Tribunal is the latest in a series of high profile judicial engagements with the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. The case concerned the legal status of s.68(7) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, and in particular, whether this provision constituted a successful attempt to oust…
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Anurag Deb: Privacy International: A Matter of Constitutional Logic and Judicial Trust?
Introduction The High Court and Court of Appeal decisions in Privacy International v IPT have ignited the debate on the ‘validity’ or otherwise of ouster clauses in the UK constitution (see analyses in the Admin Law Blog and the UKCLA Blog). At one end is the argument that ouster clauses prevent the correction of legal…
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Adam Tucker: Parliamentary Intention, Anisminic, and the Privacy International Case (Part Two)
In Part 1, I cast Anisminic as an example of a common law doctrine of interpretation which can require courts to depart from the intention of Parliament when interpreting ouster clauses. Here, I examine how that bears on Privacy International. The Limited Relevance of Anisminic Anisminic demonstrates that the court must distinguish between those decisions…
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Adam Tucker: Parliamentary Intention, Anisminic, and the Privacy International Case (Part One)
Introduction Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard argument in R (Privacy International) v Investigatory Powers Tribunal. This litigation has already attracted substantial scholarly attention in the published literature (notably in articles by Paul Scott and Tom Hickman in Public Law) and online (including a symposium at the Administrative Law in the Common Law World…
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Hayley J. Hooper: Balancing Access to Justice and the Public Interest: Privacy International and Ouster Clauses in the Broader Constitutional Context
In November 2017, the Court of Appeal in R (Privacy International) v Investigatory Powers Tribunal unanimously held that a so-called “ouster clause” in respect of the of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) was lawful. This decision may appear odd as out of step with what appears to be a steady march towards increasingly concrete principles…
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Thomas Fairclough: Privacy International: Constitutional Substance over Semantics in Reading Ouster Clauses
I have previously written on this blog and elsewhere about statutory interpretation and the rule of law. In the previous blog post I stated that the idea “that the courts will not allow the executive to escape their jurisdiction is well established as part of the rule of law” and referenced, inter alia, Anisminic Ltd…