22 May 2019 | Commentary on Lord Sumption's Reith Lectures
Judges are ever more significant in our public life. This was true before the Brexit process began and it will remain true even if the UK leaves the EU. Courts, domestic and European, have come to exercise ever more authority over an ever wider range of public...
11 Mar 2019 | Past events
a panel discussion on treason law reform with Rt Hon Lord Evans of Weardale KCB DL former Director General, Security Service Rt Hon Lord Judge PC former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Jo Morris Barrister, Charter Chambers Tom Tugendhat MBE MP Co-author,...
14 Feb 2019 | Legislated Rights
The guiding aim of legislatures should be to protect and promote human rights. This might seem a common sense or obvious proposition. But there are some theorists and judges who reject it, holding that human rights are the province of courts while the task of...
14 Feb 2019 | Legislated Rights
Legislated Rights makes an important contribution to contemporary rights scholarship. Taking the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as its starting point, it explores how legislatures can and should play an active role in ensuring that people enjoy rights, not just...
14 Feb 2019 | Legislated Rights
The central thesis of this profound and thoughtful book is the crucial role of the legislature in securing and promoting human rights. The arguments command strong assent. There are many, many parts of it which are fundamental and devastating. There is, however, an...
14 Feb 2019 | Legislated Rights
I very much welcome the book’s overall theme that legislation gives effect to and protects human rights. It seems incredible that the UK’s leading judge should have thought that until the advent of the European Convention of Human Rights in 1951 UK law did not...
14 Feb 2019 | Legislated Rights
Legislated Rights is an important and essential addition to the library of anyone seeking to better understand the potential role of and justification for legislatures engaging in the protection and promotion of human rights. By skillfully explaining and building upon...
14 Feb 2019 | Legislated Rights
Legislated Rights: Securing Human Rights through Legislation challenges ideas that find ready support in the case law of European and Commonwealth courts and the academic literature. We are grateful to our distinguished commentators, who have a wealth of judicial...
11 Feb 2019 | Past events
The launch of The US Department of Defense Law of War Manual: Commentary and Critique (Cambridge University Press) with Professor Michael Newton Professor, Vanderbilt University Law School former Judge Advocate for the 7th Special Forces Group, U.S. Army Tom Tugendhat...
29 Jan 2019 | Constitutional Rights and Constitutional Design
I am enormously grateful to the distinguished judges and scholars who have read and engaged with my book Constitutional Rights and Constitutional Design, and appreciate both the praise and criticism. In this reply I respond to some points they raise. As I write, news...
13 Dec 2018 | Constitutional Rights and Constitutional Design
The global expansion of judicial power means that courts around the world are increasingly called on to settle matters of moral and political controversy, including assisted suicide, data privacy, anti-terrorism measures, marriage, and abortion. But doubts regarding...
13 Dec 2018 | Constitutional Rights and Constitutional Design
Almost every country in the world has legislation that prohibits physician-assisted suicide. The UK Parliament voted overwhelmingly to maintain its prohibition of the practice in 2015 (330 to 118), but the law has been challenged in recent cases (Conway and...
13 Dec 2018 | Constitutional Rights and Constitutional Design
Paul Yowell’s Constitutional Rights and Constitutional Design is a superb book, with a kind of lapidary intelligence. I think it advances the conversation in two ways, methological and substantive. Methodologically, it pursues the comparative-institutional method,...
13 Dec 2018 | Constitutional Rights and Constitutional Design
Constitutional Rights and Constitutional Design is a wonderful book – full of riches, concise, tightly argued, and carefully interwoven. It is itself a model of careful design as well as a study of the absence (or failure) of constitutional design and a prescription...
13 Dec 2018 | Constitutional Rights and Constitutional Design
Sed quid custodes ipso custodiet? Who will guard the guardians? The question is not posed until nearly the end of this impressive new book, but it is clear from the outset that Paul Yowell is animated by a deep concern about the exercise of judicial power. He taps...
13 Dec 2018 | Constitutional Rights and Constitutional Design
Do courts and judges have the institutional capacity needed to settle the kinds of morally and politically controversial issues that arise in constitutional rights cases? Paul Yowell argues that the institutional setting of a court is lacking in basic capacities for...
13 Dec 2018 | Constitutional Rights and Constitutional Design
Ι Justice Scalia’s criticism of the ‘living Constitution’ interpretive theory highlighted the dangers facing the democratic process from the judicial approach whereby terms used in the Constitution are perceived, not in the sense they had when they were adopted, but...
19 Nov 2018 | Publications, Publications: Critiquing Judicial Power
The Inner House of the Court of Session in Scotland acted wrongly in referring to the Court of Justice of the EU the question of whether the UK can unilaterally revoke Article 50 and so remain in the EU. As the UK Supreme Court urgently considers the Government’s...
18 Oct 2018 | Past events
Speaking at the first such cross-party event in Westminster, General David Petraeus, former Commander, US Central Command, tells a packed Policy Exchange audience that expansion of European Human Rights law “is having a chilling effect on recruiting, retention &...
18 Oct 2018 | Past events
A lecture from The Hon Justice Bradley W Miller, Court of Appeal for Ontario, on: Constitutional Supremacy and Judicial Reasoning: Doctrinal Difficulties in Canada and Abroad With a Vote of Thanks by The Rt Hon Lord Sumption, Justice of the Supreme Court. About...
23 Jul 2018 | Judicial Power and the Left
In a recent post on this site ‘Judicial Power and the Left: A Short Response’ Professor Phil Syrpis welcomes the publication of Judicial Power and the Left whilst disagreeing with its general thrust. He judges it ‘far better [for the Left] to embrace a more legal, and...
