Tag: Parliamentary sovereignty
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Stuart Lakin: Parliamentary Privilege, Parliamentary Sovereignty, and Constitutional Principle
While this was probably not its primary objective at the time, the Daily Telegraph scoop on MPs’ expenses in 2008 has led to the reinvigoration of debates about Parliamentary privilege. Since then, this area of law and Parliamentary practice has hardly left the news, both mainstream and legal. We have had the Chaytor decision, the…
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Mike Gordon: What is the Point of Exceptional Circumstances Review?
A great deal of the controversy surrounding the recent case of Axa General Insurance Ltd v Lord Advocate [2011] UKSC 46, already much discussed on this blog, stems from the notion of ‘exceptional circumstances review’. The Supreme Court’s decision that it has the authority as a matter of common law to reject Acts of the…
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Cormac Mac Amhlaigh: W(h)ither Sovereignty?
Harbingers of the demise of sovereignty are not new. At least since Karl Marx prophesized the withering away of the state, the heralding of the end of sovereignty has been an almost recurrent theme in political theory. In recent times, however, these prophecies have become increasingly insistent and have, perhaps for the first time, emanated…
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Stuart Lakin: How to Defend a Theory of the British Constitution
In two recent contributions to this blog, Professors Goldsworthy and Oliver have put forward two quite different bases for Parliament having sovereign power (and for courts not having the power to strike down legislation). For Goldsworthy, Parliamentary sovereignty is a fact about the constitution: it reflects the beliefs of most officials about the power of…
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Dawn Oliver: Parliamentary Sovereignty: A Pragmatic or Principled Doctrine?
Imagine that Parliament has recently passed a provision authorising the indefinite detention without trial of suspected terrorists. The measure was passed during a public panic about terrorism. Public opinion and the press and parliamentarians of the party in government which promoted the legislation were strongly in favour of using such powers. The Home Secretary orders…
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Jeffrey Goldsworthy: Parliamentary Sovereignty’s Premature Obituary
At the end of a long review of my book Parliamentary Sovereignty, Contemporary Debates (CUP, 2010, hereafter PS), Vernon Bogdanor concludes that I have “suffered one of the worst fates that can befall a philosopher”: I have “become the prisoner of a doctrine” – that of parliamentary sovereignty (“Imprisoned by a Doctrine: The Modern Defence…
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Mike Gordon: The European Union Act 2011
The European Union Act 2011 (EUA) is an unprecedented constitutional experiment. This post will outline the two main innovations of the Act: (1) the section 18 ‘sovereignty’ clause; and (2) the scheme of ‘referendum locks’ introduced in sections 2, 3 and 6. Three key questions raised by the EUA for UK constitutional lawyers will then…
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Gordon Anthony: Axa – A view from Northern Ireland
It is a little over 6 weeks since the Supreme Court delivered its long-awaited ruling in Axa General Insurance v Lord Advocate [2011] UKSC 46. Although the ruling was of primary importance to Scottish law – see, for instance, its liberalisation of the rules on title and interest/standing – the challenge to the Damages (Asbestos-related…
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Alison L. Young: Fixed-Term Parliaments and Neurath’s Ship
The UK constitution could be compared to Neurath’s ship. Unlike other countries, the UK cannot point to a single defining moment when a constitution was definitively ‘launched’, its provisions set out in one document named ‘Constitution’. The UK’s constitution has evolved over time, building on and replacing the ‘old timbers’ of statutes, common law, conventions,…