Tag: Northern Ireland Act 1998
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Lisa Claire Whitten: The Belfast ‘Good Friday’ Agreement and Unconstructive Ambiguity
Speaking in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister described the controversial provisions of the UK Internal Market (UKIM) Bill as a “legal safety net” to protect “the Northern Irish peace process and the Good Friday Agreement” against “extreme” implementation of the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol (the Protocol) contained in the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement that he…
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Colin Murray: A Referendum on a United Ireland: Perspectives from UK Constitutional Law
Editors’ Note: This post is part of an IACL-AIDC Blog Symposium on unification of the island of Ireland. The Symposium is co-hosted by the Constitution Project @ UCC Blog. Selected posts will also be co-hosted by the UKCLA Blog. The full set of posts can be found here. The Northern Ireland Act 1998, a statute…
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Oran Doyle: Irish Unification: Processes and Considerations
Editors’ Note: This post is part of an IACL-AIDC Blog Symposium on unification of the island of Ireland. The Symposium is co-hosted by the Constitution Project @ UCC Blog. Selected posts will also be co-hosted by the UKCLA Blog. The full set of posts can be found here. The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (GFA)—the agreement between…
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Chris McCorkindale and Aileen McHarg: Constitutional Pathways to a Second Scottish Independence Referendum
The Scottish Government’s Case for a Second Independence Referendum On 19 December 2019 – a week after the Westminster General Election at which the SNP, again, won an overwhelming majority of Scottish seats – the Scottish Government published its long-awaited case for a second independence referendum: Scotland’s Right to Choose: Putting Scotland’s Future in Scotland’s…
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Anurag Deb: Identity: Northern Ireland’s Gordian Knot
On 14 October 2019, the Upper Tribunal (UT) handed down judgment in SSHD v De Souza, immediately dividing commentators both in and outside Northern Ireland. Briefly, the UT had heard the Home Secretary’s appeal against the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) decision which had declared that the American claimant (respondent in the UT) was entitled to apply…
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Rory O’Connell: The Johnson Letter and Cross-community Agreement in Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is the part of these islands likely to be most affected by Brexit. As Parliament is currently debating the Government’s proposed new approach to the EU, issues about Northern Ireland require detailed consideration, especially in light of the Good Friday / Belfast Agreement. Bearing in mind the Agreement, the political and constitutional implications…
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Joanna Bell: The Supreme Court’s Approach to the Finality Clause in Lee v Ashers: A Response to Anurag Deb & Conor McCormick & Looking Forward to Privacy International
Lee v Ashers Baking Company Ltd [2018] UKSC 49 (‘gay cake’ case) has probably not escaped the attention of any public lawyer. As Anurag Deb & Conor McCormick have usefully pointed out in a recent blog post, however, what may have been overlooked is that this case is not only important from a human rights…
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Anurag Deb and Conor McCormick: Lee v Ashers: A Recipe for Jurisdictional Confusion?
On 10 October 2018, the UK Supreme Court handed down its judgment in Lee v Ashers Baking Company Ltd [2018] UKSC 49, sparking much debate and commentary. The judgment is legally important for how it conceptualises freedom of expression, and for the surprising evidence of judicial overreaching it contains. Given that others have already considered…
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Colin Murray: Brexit and the “Constitutional Integrity” of the United Kingdom
Something no Prime Minister could contemplate The Foreign Office records regarding the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 must be amongst the most regularly requested papers held at the National Archives. One file, FO 608/65, is part of the herculean effort to redraw the map of Europe after the First World War. It recounts the efforts…
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Anurag Deb: Buick: Two Courts, Two Approaches and No Government
On 6 July 2018, the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal handed down its ruling in Buick’s application for judicial review [2018] NICA 26. A keenly awaited ruling for its constitutional implications, the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal of the Northern Ireland Department for Infrastructure (“DFI”) against the decision of Mrs Justice Keegan in the…