Tag: legal constitutionalism
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Iain Halliday: Political and Legal Constitutionalism in the Age of Supreme Court Referrals
Back in early 2013 I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on the role of law and politics in the independence debate. I concluded that: “Throughout the independence debate, the law, in the form of judicial intervention, had no role to play. This can be seen as a victory for the political constitution. In the context of…
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Brian Christopher Jones: A single written UK constitution may only make things worse
Arguments for and against a single written (or ‘codified’) UK constitution often revolve around flexibility versus rigidity or transparency versus opacity. Recently, another common objection is that it would just be inconvenient, or impossible given the current levels of polarisation. These objections are reasonable and legitimate, but they are hardly the full extent of the…
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Richard Ekins: Reflections on Democracy’s Foundations
This is part of a series of posts in which Richard Ekins reflects upon Lord Sumption’s Reith Lectures. You can find the first posts here, here and here. In his fifth and final Reith lecture, broadcast yesterday morning and entitled “Shifting the Foundations”, Jonathan Sumption brings to a conclusion his reflections on “the decline of…
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Richard Ekins: Constitutional Lessons from America
This is part of a series of posts in which Richard Ekins reflects upon Lord Sumption’s Reith Lectures. You can find the first posts here and here. In his fourth Reith lecture, broadcast yesterday morning and entitled “Rights and the Ideal Constitution”, Jonathan Sumption turns to the American experience of struggling to reconcile democracy with…