Tag: Judicial Independence
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Hleb Buziuk: Independent by Assertion: The Immigration and Asylum Bill and the Re-Departmentalisation of Adjudication
On 13 July 2026, the Immigration and Asylum Bill is scheduled to receive its second reading in the House of Commons. Public attention has fixed on Part 2 and its Article 8 clauses. This post is about Part 1 (clauses 1-16 and Schedules 1-3), which has attracted less commentary but may prove the more consequential.…
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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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Max Taylor: A Role for Parliament in Independent Judicial Appointments: A Comparison with the Comptroller and Auditor General
The Starmer ministry plans to ‘…deepen our democracy by reforming Parliament…’, but missing from its proposals is any reconsideration of whether Parliament should adopt a role in judicial appointments somewhat analogous to that of the US Senate in federal judicial appointments (US Constitution, Art II, s 2). Debate about such a proposal has recurred from…
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Richard Clayton QC: Will the Caribbean Court of Justice replace the Privy Council?
Logic suggests that replacing the Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice (the CCJ) is not a question of whether – but when. Since the Norman Conquest the Privy Council has been the cabinet through which the monarch governed England. Its jurisdiction was based on the idea that “the King is the fountain of all…
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David Stott: Ministerial Influence in Judicial Appointments – Taking Back Control?
Not since the Blair era has a government been so committed to a significant programme of constitutional reform as the Johnson government, but with very different objectives. The Blair government sought to modernise the constitution and, through the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, to formalise a separation of powers in respect of the judges by (i)…
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Dimitrios Kyriazis: Does EU law preclude national constitutional provisions under which the executive plays a role in the appointment of members of the judiciary?
‘The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.’ Madison’s famous proclamation in the Federalist Papers (No 47) forms the theoretical basis underpinning the doctrine of the separation of…
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Lewis Graham: Lessons from Lord Hope’s Diaries: judicial ideology and panel selection
Even in a more transparent and open Supreme Court, glimpses behind the curtain of officialdom are seldom offered to the public. This is understandable; the independence and impartiality of the judiciary sets it apart from other branches of the state. As Lord Neuberger (The Power of Judges, p.22) has noted, to be effective, “justice has…
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Theodore Konstadinides and Riccardo Sallustio: Clause 26 of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill 2019-20: An Exercise of Constitutional Impropriety?
The European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill 2019-20 will pave the way for the UK to ratify the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement and thus depart from the European Union (EU) soon thereafter, having received its third reading in the House of Commons just last week. This contribution examines certain major consequences deriving from the Bill becoming law…
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Jan van Zyl Smit: After Poland’s Attempted Purge of ‘Communist-era’ Judges, Do We Need New International Standards for Post-authoritarian Countries Reforming Their Judiciary? (Part II)
Editors’ note: This is Part II of a two-part contribution. You can read Part I HERE. In Part I of this blog post, I discussed the recent attempt by the Polish government to remove members of the Supreme Court by lowering the retirement age to exclude ‘Communist-era’ judges. Other countries, not only the former Communist…
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Jan van Zyl Smit: After Poland’s Attempted Purge of ‘Communist-era’ Judges, Do We Need New International Standards for Post-authoritarian Countries Reforming Their Judiciary? (Part I)
Editors’ note: This is the first of a two-part contribution, the second part of which will appear on the blog tomorrow. For most of last year, the government of Poland maintained that legislation which effectively dismissed 27 Supreme Court judges (a third of the Court) by lowering the age of retirement was necessary to deal…