Tag: UK Prime Minister
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Yossi Nehushtan: Prorogation and Justiciability
The question of justiciability lies at the heart of the judicial response to the legal challenges that were brought against the Prime Minister’s administrative decision to advise the Queen to prorogue Parliament in Miller 2 and Cherry. The judicial reluctance to exercise judicial review regarding the administrative decision to advise the Queen to prorogue Parliament…
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Dean Knight: Reasoning Through Challenges to Prorogation: Cherry and Miller (No 2)
The challenges to the prime minister’s request to the Queen to prorogue Parliament in the face of the fast approaching Brexit deadline have many fascinating dimensions (Cherry v Advocate General [2019] CSIH 49 and R (Miller) v Prime Minister [2019] EWHC 2381 (Miller (No 2)). The question of justiciability has been at the forefront. And…
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Hasan Dindjer: Prorogation as a Breach of Parliamentary Sovereignty
Does proroguing Parliament under the present circumstances breach the principle of parliamentary sovereignty? The Divisional Court in Miller v Prime Minister (‘Miller (No 2)’) thought not. It held that the principle is not wide enough to be threatened by prorogation ([63]-[64]). I argue here that this conclusion rests on too narrow a view of parliamentary…
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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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Timothy Endicott: Don’t Panic
The brilliant accident of our form of constitutionalism is not just that the executive came to be accountable to an assembly. It is that the assembly came to be responsible for the executive –for its membership, its policy, its operation, everything. Prorogation, in particular, concerns the operation of the proceedings of Parliament, and it is…
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Alan Greene: Miller 2, Non-justiciability and the Danger of Legal Black Holes
In R (Miller) and Others v The Prime Minister (hereinafter Miller No.2), the High Court of England and Wales found that the decision of the Prime Minister to advise the Queen to prorogue parliament was non-justiciable. In doing so, the judgment reveals the propensity of the judiciary to be much more protective of its own…
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Robert Craig: What Could Happen Next If the Government Resigns Rather than Send the Letter to the EU?
This post follows on from a previous piece where I attempted to set out the general rules, and a flowchart, to create a route map in the event of a vote of no confidence. This post seeks to address the narrower question of what could happen if the Prime Minister (‘PM’) refused to send the…
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Tarunabh Khaitan: On Coups, Constitutional Shamelessness, and Lingchi
The decision of the Boris Johnson government to prorogue Parliament with the motive of frustrating the latter’s attempts to outlaw a no-deal Brexit was described by some as a ‘coup’. Much debate has since ensued about whether this characterisation is accurate. Whether the government’s actions in relation to Parliament’s prorogation amount to a coup or…
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Michael Detmold: The Proper Denial of Royal Assent
Twenty-one eminent constitutional lawyers expressed this view in a letter to the Times (3 4 19): ‘Any attempt to advise refusal of Royal Assent to a Bill passed by Parliament would stand constitutional principle on its head. It would presume a governmental power to override Parliament, yet it is in Parliament, not the Executive, that…
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Paul Craig: Prorogation: Constitutional Principle and Law, Fact and Causation
The Prime Minister’s recent announcement that Parliament would be prorogued, thereby severely curtailing the opportunity for parliamentary debate, raises important issues of constitutional principle and law, and also issues concerning fact and causation. They are examined in turn. Constitutional Principle and Law We begin with constitutional principle and law. We seek to decide whether the…