Tag: Royal Prerogative
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Event: Book Launch – Royal Law: Prerogative Foundations
University of Bristol Centre for European and Public Law 18:00-19:30 July 3rd 2025 2.13 Wills Memorial Building, University of Bristol and Online at https://bristol-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/97632863445 The Centre for European and Public Law invites you to join us for the launch of Dr Robert Craig’s new book: Royal Law: Prerogative Foundations. The event will include a brief…
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Dane Luo: There is ‘Advice’ and then there is ‘advice’: The Constitutional Conventions on the Appointment of the Prime Minister
On 23 May 2025, the Court of Appeal held that the Conservative Party was not exercising a ‘public function’ for the purposes of s 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 when it elected Liz Truss as party leader, who would go on to be appointed as the Prime Minister: R (Tortoise Media Ltd) v…
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Leonid Sirota: Tortoise Media: Another Step towards the Political Constitution’s Demise?
At the outset of their judgment for the Supreme Court in R (Miller) v Prime Minister [2019] UKSC 41, [2020] AC 373 (a.k.a. Miller No. 2), Lady Hale and Lord Reed sought to reassure those who might be nervous about its implications: the case, they said, ‘arises in circumstances which have never arisen before and are unlikely ever to…
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Anurag Deb: Direct Rule in Northern Ireland and the Power to Make Irrational Laws
The townland of Carrickmore in County Tyrone in Northern Ireland is the ancestral home of legendary Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. It is also near an ancient and beautifully preserved Neolithic court tomb, excavated between 1979 and 1982. Carrickmore was at the heart of a different funerary matter when, on 3 February 2023, the Northern Ireland…
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Hayley J. Hooper: The Principle of Legality and Prerogative Power after the Third Direction Case
In March 2021, the Court of Appeal handed down a unanimous judgment in Privacy International v Foreign Secretary ‘the Third Direction case’. The unanimous decision held permitting the Security Services (MI5) to authorise criminal conduct by agents was lawful. The authority for the policy existed by necessary implication in ss 1-2 of the Security Services Act…
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David Kershaw: Revolutionary Amnesia and the Delegated Nature of Prerogative Power
“Left” in the Hands of the Crown The extent to which an exercise of prerogative power can be subject to judicial review, as well as the nature of such review, are umbilically connected to the nature and source of prerogative power. But what is the nature of the prerogative powers exercised by the Crown today—how…
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Derek O’Brien: Prorogation: A Postcolonial Perspective
Whether or not it is ultimately found to be unlawful, the Prime Minister’s decision to advise the Queen to prorogue Parliament has shed a spotlight on what Robert Blackburn has described in his illuminating article on the monarch’s personal prerogatives as: “a little corner of the constitution that is little understood and is routinely misunderstood”,…
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Robert Craig: Judicial Review of Advice to Prorogue Parliament
In a recent Times article, Lord Pannick QC – leading Counsel in the Miller litigation – argues that if a Prime Minister were to advise HMQ to prorogue parliament to achieve a No Deal exit, an application could be made to the courts to determine the lawfulness of such advice. Sir John Major said on…
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Sam Fowles: Can the Prime Minister Prorogue Parliament to Deliver a No Deal Brexit?
In recent days certain government backbenchers have proposed a new avenue to deliver a “no deal” Brexit. As Sir Edward Leigh put it: “There are only two choices given the EU won’t change the deal and there’s no chance of parliament passing it. One is cancel Brexit: an intolerable denial of democracy. The…
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John Finnis: Royal Assent – A Reply to Mark Elliott
I agree with Mark Elliott in finding my April 1 argument about prorogation and assent astonishing and monstrous, once the argument’s important premises have been omitted, as he has omitted them. And it is left even more objectionable when he has attributed to it a premise, two assumptions, and a goal each far from my…