Can Parliament prevent a no-deal Brexit?
Boris Johnson, the UK’s new Prime Minister, says that the UK will leave the EU on 31 October “do or die”. With negotiations between the UK and the EU apparently […]
House of Lords Constitution Committee reports on Parliamentary Scrutiny of Treaties
By Mark Elliott and Stephen Tierney The topic of parliamentary scrutiny of the making of treaties could hardly be more topical, given the role that Parliament is currently playing in […]
Royal Assent and constitutional principle: A further response to John Finnis
A good deal has been written over the last couple of weeks about the granting of Royal Assent to legislation — and, in particular, about whether the Government can prevent […]
Does the Prime Minister’s request for an Article 50 extension scupper the Cooper-Letwin Bill?
Earlier today, the Prime Minister wrote to the President of the European Council requesting a further extension of the Article 50 period to 30 June 2019. Meanwhile, the Cooper-Letwin Bill […]
Letter to the Times: Response to Professor Brazier’s letter on Royal Assent
A number of colleagues and I wrote to The Times earlier this week on the subject of Royal Assent to legislation. The Times subsequently published a further letter on this […]
The Cooper-Letwin Bill: Parliamentary control over the extension of Article 50
The House of Lords is today considering the Cooper-Letwin Bill — or, to give it its formal title, the European Union (Withdrawal) (No 5) Bill — which would enable the […]
Royal Assent: Letter to The Times
I am pleased to be a signatory to the following letter, which is published in today’s edition of The Times. The letter argues that it would be clearly unconstitutional for […]
Brexit, the Executive and Parliament: A response to John Finnis
In a recent article in the Telegraph, Professor John Finnis advances two quite astonishing arguments. First, he advocates proroguing Parliament until after 12 April (the day on which the UK […]
Meaningful Vote 3: The legal implications of separating the Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration
The Government has confirmed that tomorrow, Friday 29 March, it will lay a motion before the House of Commons seeking its approval of the Withdrawal Agreement — but not of […]
Did the UK Government act unlawfully by extending Article 50?
A group of Conservative MPs — including Suella Braverman, Bill Cash and David Jones — have written to the Prime Minister arguing that the UK Government acted unlawfully by obtaining […]
What if ‘exit day’ is not redefined in domestic law?
I wrote yesterday about the statutory instrument that the Government has laid before Parliament so as to realign the domestic definition of ‘exit day’ in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act […]
Redefining ‘exit day’ in domestic law
In an earlier post, I explained that the European Council’s decision to extend the Article 50 period is a separate matter from the way in which ‘exit day’ is defined […]
Revoking Article 50: Legislating to take a no-deal Brexit off the table
Throughout all of the twists and turns of the Brexit process so far, a rare point of certainty had (until recently) been that the UK was set to leave the […]
Extending Article 50: Separating myth and legal reality
There appears to be a degree of uncertainty about the legal position concerning the extension of Article 50. Confusion seems to have arisen thanks to a combination of the way […]
The Supreme Court’s judgment in Finucane — II: Three unanswered questions concerning the doctrine of legitimate expectation
In my first post on the Supreme Court’s recent judgment in In the matter of an application by Geraldine Finucane for Judicial Review [2019] UKSC 7, I considered the Court’s approach to the relevance (or otherwise) of reliance in legitimate expectation cases, and looked at the way in which the case highlights the less than straightforward nature of the distinction […]
The Supreme Court’s judgment in Finucane — I: Legitimate expectations, reliance, procedure and substance
This is the first of two posts on the Supreme Court’s recent judgment in In the matter of an application by Geraldine Finucane for Judicial Review [2019] UKSC 7. The second post can be found here. Legitimate expectation has long occupied an uncertain place within the broader doctrinal landscape of English administrative law. It sits, uncomfortably, at a number of […]
