Tag: popular sovereignty
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Catriona Mullay: A Fresh Start, the Old Tradition: Sovereignty and the Scottish Constitutional Imaginary
Recently, the Scottish Government published A Fresh Start with Independence, restating the case for autonomy and outlining aspects of the prospective Scottish state. Despite the narrative of renewal, however, the sections on the Scottish constitution are firmly in the vein of what has been seen before. This blog post explores some of the issues raised…
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Sanjit Nagi: “A Mandate for Change!”: Popular Sovereignty and the Labour Party
The recent general election saw the Labour Party being elected with a majority of 171 seats in Parliament. The following morning, in his first speech as Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer claimed the nation had given the Labour Party a “clear mandate”. Similarly, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, stated the British people…
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Rivka Weill: We the British People Rule: From 1832 to the Present
To anyone who accepts Britain’s parliamentary sovereignty, Brexit should not make sense. How could a nation committed to parliamentary rule find itself bound by a consultative referendum’s result? And after the majority of Parliament had repeatedly opposed Brexit! In “From Earl Grey to Boris Johnson: Brexit and the Anglo-American Constitutional Model,” I reveal that…
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Graziella Romeo: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: The Italian Institutional Crisis and Europe
There is no shortage of stories on Italian institutional crises originated in the context of a parliamentary system with multi-party inclinations and a misfit electoral law. And Italy is not even an isolated case of hard processes of formation of government after troubled elections: the cases of the Netherlands and Belgium may be easily recalled.…
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Thomas Poole: Losing our Religion? Public Law and Brexit
Prerogative is the enemy of the people. This has been settled as matter of law for a very long time. The constitutional settlement of 1688 made a decision for responsible and representative government. We have had no constitutional moment of similar magnitude since. All constitutional changes – some very significant – have taken place within…
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Luke McDonagh: What Future for the Rule of Law and Human Rights in the New Populist Environment?
Introductions When I teach UK constitutional law to my students we often discuss the relationship between UK parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law, and the tensions that inevitably occur in a liberal democratic society between the ruling executive/legislature and the judiciary. One thing that is readily apparent is that these tensions – which have…
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Sionaidh Douglas-Scott: Miller: Why the Government Should Still Lose in the Supreme Court (Even with New Arguments)
In the landmark legal decision in Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, the High Court ruled that the government cannot use the royal prerogative to trigger Article 50 EU Treaty, and so leave the EU, without Parliament’s authority. Since that ruling was given, a flurry of commentary on it has appeared. Some…
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Albert Weale: The Constitution of Democracy and the Pretensions of the Plebiscite
When the UK’s High Court rendered its decision on whether the government could trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty under the royal prerogative to initiate the UK leaving the European Union, it released a storm of abuse against the judiciary in the press and among cabinet ministers. ‘Enemies of the people’ snorted the Daily…
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Mark Elliott and Hayley J. Hooper: Critical reflections on the High Court’s judgment in R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union
The judgment of the High Court in R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2016] EWHC 2768 (Admin), decided on 3 November 2016, has been subjected to astonishing and wholly misguided criticism by politicians and the press. Let us be clear, then, at the outset of this post that we entertain no…
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Jean Leclair: Brexit and the Unwritten Constitutional Principle of Democracy: A Canadian Perspective
Much has been written on whether a prior approval by the UK Parliament is required to trigger the withdrawal process from the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. I will not presume to comment on the technical legal issues raised by this debate. Instead, I wish to highlight how the…