Today's Sunday Telegraph features an extraordinary interview with the UK Government's Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab. The report raises three issues of significant constitutional concern: that the Government may be contemplating further changes to judicial review in the light of recent judgments to which it takes exception; that the Government is considering undermining through domestic law … Continue reading Undermining the rule of law? A comment on the Justice Secretary’s Sunday Telegraph interview
Category: Constitutional Law
By Mark Elliott and Nicholas Kilford In the Continuity Bill Reference, the Supreme Court advanced a striking analysis of the implications for devolution of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty — or, more specifically, of the provision in the Scotland Act 1998 that had hitherto been understood merely to affirm that doctrine. The provision in question … Continue reading Devolution in the Supreme Court: Legislative supremacy, Parliament’s ‘unqualified’ power, and ‘modifying’ the Scotland Act
It doesn’t seem (because it isn’t) very long since the UK Government planned to get Parliament to enact legislation that would have authorised Ministers to make regulations permitting parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol they don’t like to be breached. The Government sensibly dropped this idea in the end: the relevant provisions did not find … Continue reading Legal exceptionalism in British political discourse: International law, parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law
In this series of posts and accompanying videos, I have considered how the UK constitution works by looking at a range of issues and attempting to draw connections between them, with a view to considering whether (and, if so, to what extent) the constitution functions satisfactorily. To the extent that it does, this is largely … Continue reading Constitutional Law: The Big Picture VI — Drawing Conclusions
So far in this series of posts and accompanying videos, I have introduced an overarching question about the nature of the UK constitution — and, in particular, about whether it is really as flexible as is commonly supposed — and have considered that question in relation to judicial review, the protection of human rights and … Continue reading Constitutional Law: The Big Picture V — Lessons from EU Membership
This is the fourth in a series of posts and accompanying videos on the UK constitution. In earlier pieces in this series, I introduced it and went on to consider judicial review and human rights. The overall aim of this set of posts and videos is to explore the nature of the UK constitution through … Continue reading Constitutional Law: The Big Picture IV — The Territorial Constitution
The first two pieces in this set of blogposts introduced the series of accompanying lectures and considered the role of judicial review. The overarching purpose of the series is to explore the nature of the United Kingdom’s constitution by asking whether it is better understood as ultimately malleable and flexible — such that a sovereign … Continue reading Constitutional Law: The Big Picture III — Human Rights
In the first post in this series, I explained that the aim of the accompanying set of videos — which began life as a series of lectures to Cambridge undergraduate Law students — is to address the nature of the UK constitution by posing a particular question about it. The question that I ask is … Continue reading Constitutional Law: The Big Picture II — Judicial Review
During the academic year 2021-22, Professor Alison Young and I will be leading a new project entitled ‘Constitutional Law Matters’. At the heart of the project, which is generously supported by the Gatsby Foundation, will be two objectives. First, the project will engage with and attempt to answer the question, ‘Does the UK constitution (still) … Continue reading Constitutional Law Matters: A new project and a job opportunity
Each year, the lectures in Constitutional Law for undergraduate students at Cambridge are rounded off by a series entitled ‘The Big Picture’. This year, of necessity, they were delivered online rather than in-person, and so I thought I would take the opportunity to make the lectures available here in case they might be of more … Continue reading Constitutional Law: The Big Picture I — Introduction
Public Law for Everyone 