Professor Mark Elliott
Uncertainty about the position of the Prime Minister has raised the question whether Andy Burnham, currently the Mayor of Greater Manchester, might return to the House of Commons in order to challenge for the leadership of the Labour Party. Some commentators have even suggested that Burnham could, on an interim basis, become Prime Minister before winning a by-election and becoming an MP. This post explains why that view is incorrect.
The forthcoming King’s Speech, it is reported, will include a Bill to facilitate “dynamic alignment” with some EU rules, attracting criticism from some politicians that sovereignty regained through Brexit is now to be sacrificed, subverting the “will of the people”. Such arguments, however, cannot withstand scrutiny.
A complete list of posts can be found in the archive
As prorogation and a King’s Speech approach, the Terminally Ill Adults Bill cannot now be enacted before the end of the current parliamentary session. By blocking the Bill, has the House of Lords constitutionally overreached?
In the Ammori case, the High Court held that the Home Secretary’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000 was unlawful. But a quashing order has not been issued and the government now plans to appeal. In those circumstances, are media reports correct to say that, for the time being, Palestine Action…
The High Court has ruled that the government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000 was unlawful, holding that the decision contravenes the government’s own policy on proscription as well as breaching the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. This post examines the legal reasoning that led the…
In an open letter written in the context of the passage of the Terminally Ill Adults Bill through Parliament, three former Cabinet Secretaries assert that respect for the ‘primacy’ of the Commons is ‘not optional’. Contrary to this claim, however, the Commons has only such primacy as convention and law accord to it.
The incoming Deputy President of the Supreme Court devoted a recent lecture to a critique of my commentary on his judgment in the Spitalfields case, highlighting differences between us concerning the nature of the principle of legality. In this response to Lord Sales, I argue that underlying our disagreement are two sharply contrasting conceptions of…
The House of Lords Constitution Committee’s new report on the rule of law provides an excellent overview of the concept and of the many challenges it finds itself under in the UK today. But the report’s focus on successive governments’ acts of constitutional negligence and recklessness that present challenges for the rule of law obscures…