Tag: War Powers
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Tanzil Chowdhury: Statutorising UK Military Deployments and Assessing Anxieties of Their Justiciability
The paramount anxieties that emerge from attempts to statutorising Parliament’s role in making decisions on whether to commit military action abroad has not just been to do with deferring power from the executive to the Commons, but also with the potential justiciability of such decisions. While frequent attempts to table such bills are often accompanied…
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Mark Bennett: The Ever-Expanding ‘Emergency’ Exception: Syria, the War Powers Convention, and the Bypassing of Prior Parliamentary Debate
Introduction In a recent post on this blog, Veronika Fikfak and Hayley Hooper outlined the implications of the UK’s military intervention in Syria, on 13 April 2018, vis-à-vis the so-called War Powers Convention. For present purposes, it suffices to briefly remind readers that the broad acceptance of this nascent constitutional development was underscored by its…
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Veronika Fikfak and Hayley J. Hooper: Whither the War Powers Convention? What Next for Parliamentary Control of Armed Conflict after Syria?
A. Introduction and Background On Friday 13 April 2018 the Royal Air Force participated in air strikes (together with the United States and France) to degrade the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons capability and to deter further chemical attacks. This intervention in Syria was not authorised by the UN Security Council, nor was the involvement of…
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Gavin Phillipson: Voting on Military Action in Syria: A Reply
Dr Veronika Fikfak and Dr Hayley J. Hooper make some valuable points in their two part post on today’s vote on whether to expand British military action against ISIL to Syrian territory. I do not have sufficient expertise to engage with Dr Fikfak’s thoughtful analysis of the international law position, and would wholeheartedly endorse Dr…
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Hayley J. Hooper: Voting on Military Action in Syria: Part II
This post is intended as a follow on to Veronika Fikfak’s recent post on the international law dimensions of armed conflict as they affect the role of the UK Parliament. Recent reports suggest that a parliamentary vote on extending military action against ISIS/ISIL from Iraq into Syrian territory may take place this week. However, the…
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Veronika Fikfak: Voting on Military Action in Syria
Next week Members of Parliament will debate and vote on whether to support the Government’s proposal to extend military action against Islamic State (IS) to Syria. On Thursday, the Prime Minister made his case to the House, relying on the new Security Council Resolution to insist that the intervention would be legal. In this post,…
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Gavin Phillipson: “Historic” Commons’ Syria vote: the constitutional significance. Part II – the way forward
In Part I of this blog post I set out in detail the reasoned case for my opinion that, following the Syria vote in August 2013, there is a constitutional Convention to the effect that ‘the Government must, before, commencing any military action, permit a debate and vote in the House of Commons and abide…
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Gavin Phillipson: ‘Historic’ Commons’ Syria vote: the constitutional significance. Part I
Does the recent vote in the House of Commons on military action against Syria have real constitutional significance? Is it the final piece of evidence that there is a constitutional convention that the consent of the House of Commons must be sought before armed force is used? If so, should anything be done to concretise…
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Sebastian Payne: Parliament’s role in conflict decisions
On the 17th May 2011 the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee produced a short report, ‘Parliament’s Role in Conflict Decisions’ (Eighth Report of Session 2010-12 HC 923) The Committee concluded that there is an urgent need for greater clarity on Parliament’s role in decisions to commit British forces to armed conflict abroad. In its report, the Committee…