Tag: Rule of Law
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Jeff King: The House of Lords, Constitutional Propriety, and the Safety of Rwanda Bill
The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill will receive its second reading in the House of Lords on 29 January 2024, having cleared the House of Commons unamended. There are a great many problems with the Rwanda Bill, any of which might weigh with the Lords, but this blog post focuses on just one:…
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Adam Tucker: The Rwanda Policy, Legal Fiction(s), and Parliament’s Legislative Authority
Last week the Supreme Court (in R (AAA) v Home Secretary) found the UK government’s policy to send asylum applicants to Rwanda unlawful on the grounds that “removal … to Rwanda would expose them to a real risk of ill-treatment by reason of refoulement” [149]. In response, the Prime Minister announced that the government intends…
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Philip Murray: Reconsidering Ouster Clauses: The High Court’s Decision in Oceana
To many, ouster clauses represent a conflict between, on the one hand, the will of a sovereign Parliament and, on the other, the rule of law’s demands that public bodies act within the limits of their powers. The common law has traditionally sought to interpret ouster clauses restrictively, employing reasoning articulated classically (but far from…
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Rhiannon Ogden-Jones: Legal Uncertainty and the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Bill 2023
The Levelling-Up and Regeneration Bill (‘LURB’), currently before the House of Lords, aims to facilitate the government’s levelling-up agenda, which was set out in the ‘Levelling-Up the United Kingdom’ White Paper in 2022. At 222 clauses and 18 schedules, full consideration of the Bill (as amended in Committee, 24th May 2023) would require more than…
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Stephen Tierney and Alison L. Young: The House of Lords Constitution Committee Reports on the Illegal Migration Bill
The Constitution Committee has released its report on the Illegal Migration Bill 2022-23. The Committee raises a number of concerns, including its potential impact on the rule of law, human rights, devolution, delegated powers, and parliamentary scrutiny. We await the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights which will most likely comment in more…
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Ronan Cormacain: The rise and rise of the super-enabling clause
It has become increasingly popular to include what I term a ‘super-enabling clause’ in primary legislation. It is my contention these clauses are bad for democracy and the rule of law. A regular enabling clause grants a minister the power to make secondary legislation on a specific point. A super-enabling clause is broader and less…
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Announcement
Nine Dots Prize: Why has the rule of law become so fragile? The Nine Dots Prize is an international writing prize. It encourages innovative thinking to tackle contemporary societal issues. Judged anonymously, they are now seeking submissions for this year’s question: Why has the rule of law become so fragile? Entrants must respond with 3,000 words…
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Michael Foran: Interpretation after the Human Rights Act? The Principle of Legality and the Rule of Law
Last week Liz Truss’s cabinet decided to shelve the proposed British Bill of Rights. Quite a lot has been said about the Bill since it was announced and many have welcomed the quiet demise of what was perceived by some to be a dangerous inroad into our human rights protection. Others have suggested that the…
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Conor McCormick: A law officer log: Recent developments concerning the office of Attorney General and its equivalents
Today marks the publication of my book on The Constitutional Legitimacy of Law Officers in the United Kingdom, which contains a detailed analysis of the functions exercised by each law officer in the UK and a conceptual analysis of their constitutional legitimacy. In this contribution, I offer some thoughts on the timeliness of the book and…
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Alison Young: Declaratory Orders and Constitutional Guardrails
The recent decision of the Supreme Court in Craig v HM Advocate (for the Government of the United States of America) affirms the core constitutional expectation that the executive will comply with declaratory orders. On its face, this appears to be quite unassuming. Yet it raises fundamental issues of inter-institutional comity and the importance of constitutional guardrails…