Tag: Parliamentary sovereignty
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Kenneth Armstrong: Can the UK Breach the Withdrawal Agreement and Get Away With It? – the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill
Amidst increasing concern about the UK Government’s intentions in respect of implementation of the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement and the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen took to Twitter to state: I trust the British government to implement the Withdrawal Agreement, an obligation under international law & prerequisite for any…
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Anthony Arnull: The European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill
The European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill is intended to give effect in the UK to the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) agreed by the UK with the EU-27 on 1 October 2019. The Bill received its second reading on 22 October 2019 and is currently in ‘limbo’ pending the start of the committee stage. If and when…
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Mike Gordon: The European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill: Parliamentary Sovereignty, Continuity and Novelty
The European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill is a highly complex piece of draft legislation. It interacts with the (revised draft) EU Withdrawal Agreement, existing domestic law, in particular the European Communities Act 1972 and the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, and a number of UK constitutional principles. It will have important implications in defining the…
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Roger Masterman and Se-shauna Wheatle: Miller/Cherry and Constitutional Principle
In an essay published in Elliott, Varuhas and Wilson Stark (eds), The Unity of Public Law? Doctrinal, Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives, we examined Lord Neuberger’s use of constitutional principle-based reasoning in R (Evans) v Attorney General. In that decision, Lord Neuberger – with whom Lords Kerr and Reed were in agreement – employed the pan-jurisdictional…
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Michael Detmold: The Monarch in the Room
(Let’s be clear. Why is an Australian constitutional lawyer writing about the UK Constitution? It’s simple. She’s our Queen, too.) The Court in Miller/Cherry (at 35) distinguished between the question ‘whether a prerogative power exists’ and ‘whether, granted that a prerogative power exists, and that it has been exercised within its limits, the exercise of…
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Theodore Konstadinides, Noreen O’Meara and Riccardo Sallustio: The UK Supreme Court’s Judgment in Miller/Cherry: Reflections on Its Context and Implications
On 24 September, the UK Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Prime Minister’s advice to prorogue Parliament was unlawful, and that the resulting Order in Council and subsequent prorogation were ‘null, void and of no effect’. The litigation on the justiciability of prorogation and the lawfulness of the Prime Ministerial advice has led to one…
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Anurag Deb: A Constitution of Principles: From Miller to Minerva Mills
Introduction In a succinct and surprisingly unanimous judgment in Miller and Cherry [2019] UKSC 41 the UK Supreme Court delivered an unprecedented rebuke to the Prime Minister in deciding that he had not shown “any reason – let alone a good reason” to advise the Queen to prorogue Parliament, ruling that the prorogation was unlawful,…
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Aris Georgopoulos: The Melting of Constitutional “Glaciers”: Miller 2 and the Prerogative Powers of Government
The purpose of this piece is to examine the legal and constitutional implications of the Miller 2 Judgment. I will focus on two aspects of the Judgment. First, the reasoning of the Court in setting and applying the standard for examining the five-week prorogation’s impact. Second, the Court’s approach concerning the examination of the reasons…
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Lorne Neudorf: The Constitutional Position of Delegated Legislation after Cherry/Miller (No 2)
Following the highly anticipated decision of the UK Supreme Court in Cherry/Miller (No 2), commentators have weighed in on some of the implications of this ground-breaking judgment. This post considers what the judgment has to say about the constitutional position of delegated legislation. Delegated legislation matters. Over time, it has become the most significant source…
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Jack Simson Caird: The Supreme Court and Parliament: The Constitutional Status of Checks and Balances
There have been two competing visions of the constitution battling it out since the Brexit referendum in 2016, which David Howarth described on this blog as the Whitehall view and the Westminster view. The Whitehall view is that the UK constitution, and the relationship between Parliament and Government in particular, is designed to allow the…