Tag: R (UNISON) v Lord Chancellor [2017] UKSC 51
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Hleb Buziuk: Independent by Assertion: The Immigration and Asylum Bill and the Re-Departmentalisation of Adjudication
On 13 July 2026, the Immigration and Asylum Bill is scheduled to receive its second reading in the House of Commons. Public attention has fixed on Part 2 and its Article 8 clauses. This post is about Part 1 (clauses 1-16 and Schedules 1-3), which has attracted less commentary but may prove the more consequential.…
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Alastair Richardson: The Legality of Home Office Fees
Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens v Secretary of State for the Home Department (PRCBC) concerned a challenge to the lawfulness of fees charged to children applying to be registered as British citizens. The fees have a serious adverse impact on the ability of many children to apply for registration. As David Richards…
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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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Jefferi Hamzah Sendut: The Prorogation Case: Proportionality in All but Name?
The place of proportionality review in UK administrative law has been the subject of considerable doctrinal debate. This post argues that the Supreme Court’s Cherry/Miller (No 2) judgment should be understood as an application of proportionality as a common law ground of substantive review. Proportionality review is no longer confined to cases involving the Human…
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Hayley J. Hooper: Keeping the Lights On: Contrasting Miller v Prime Minister and Cherry v The Advocate General
If the phrase “may you live in interesting times” actually has its roots in a curse, then, we constitutional lawyers are indeed cursed. The specific nature of the curse is the malleable nature of constitutional controls designed to protect our institutions from the whims of executive action. At the time of writing, Britain is set…
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Ewan McGaughey: Is There a ‘Legal Measure’ to Judge Parliament’s Prorogration?
A central theme of the High Court judgment in Miller v Prime Minister is that there is ‘no legal measure by which the court could form a proper judgment on’ the matter of whether prorogation was excessive to prepare for the Queen’s Speech (at [56]). It was also said to be ‘impossible for the court…
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Alison Young: Prorogation, Politics and the Principle of Legality
Constitutional lawyers often point to key cases as milestones in public law. Recently, the Supreme Court decision in Privacy International joined the ranks of leading public law cases, adding to the cases discussing ouster clauses and the extent to which courts can review decisions of inferior courts and tribunals in Anisminic and Cart. As Privacy…
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Weekly round-up of events
This week’s event announcements include: Fifty Years of ‘The Quartet’ and Modern Judicial Review, 18–19 May 2018 Second-guessing Policy Choices? The Rule of Law after the Supreme Court’s UNISON Judgment, 14 March 2018 ~~~ Fifty Years of ‘The Quartet’ and Modern Judicial Review 18–19 May 2018 The SLS Annual Seminar 2018 will be held at…
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Hayley J. Hooper: Balancing Access to Justice and the Public Interest: Privacy International and Ouster Clauses in the Broader Constitutional Context
In November 2017, the Court of Appeal in R (Privacy International) v Investigatory Powers Tribunal unanimously held that a so-called “ouster clause” in respect of the of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) was lawful. This decision may appear odd as out of step with what appears to be a steady march towards increasingly concrete principles…
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Reminder: UKCLA Annual General Meeting and Roundtable, 9th January 2018
This is a friendly reminder that the UKCLA Annual General Meeting will be held at 12 o’clock on the 9th of January 2018 in the Haldane Room, University of London, WC1E 6BT (map). The AGM is open to all paid up members of the UKCLA. All UKCLA members are invited to a Roundtable conference following…