11 Jan 2018 | Events, Past events
The expansion of judicial power has gone hand-in-hand with a greater emphasis on judicial independence. The more that judges hold those who exercise political power to account, the greater the emphasis placed on ensuring that judges are equipped—individually and...
11 Jan 2018 | Past events
The Honourable Dyson Heydon AC QC, former Justice of the High Court of Australia and one of the common-law world’s foremost figures, considered the rise of judicial review around the world in an event at Policy Exchange. Heydon warned that the phenomenon of rising...
9 Jan 2018 | Judicial Power and the Left, Publications
The retreat towards the law and the continental constitutional separation of powers, and away from democracy and parliamentary sovereignty, have been very powerful tendencies within the left over the past fifty years. This collection of essays exposes this political...
9 Jan 2018 | Judicial Power and the Left, Publications
The constitutional kaleidoscope has been shaken and politics is in flux. One consequence of this is to bring into clearer focus changing patterns of political and legal thought, some of which have been a long time in the making. One such pattern is the erosion of the...
9 Jan 2018 | Judicial Power and the Left, Publications
It is hardly surprising if the attitude of the left — which I shall leave undefined, though I shall concentrate on the Labour Party — towards judicial power is not entirely friendly. Labour has always been a working-class party rooted in trade unionism, and,...
9 Jan 2018 | Judicial Power and the Left, Publications
Why is the British left so tolerant of the rise of judicial power? By ‘the left’, I refer to those in the Labour Party — a majority of members but minority of MPs — who supported the transformative election (and re-election) of Jeremy Corbyn as party leader. Whilst...
9 Jan 2018 | Judicial Power and the Left, Publications
The question posed by this title may seem meaningless — but it is not. The reason why it is posed is the underlying issue: why should judges be trusted more than other branches of government? Our eighteenth-century forebears, like Blackstone, thought of their...
9 Jan 2018 | Judicial Power and the Left, Publications
The moment of conception for British labour law might be traced to an act of great courage in Germany in 1933. Otto Kahn-Freund, a judge in the German Labour Court, upheld the dismissal claims of three employees of the Empire Radio Company. The dismissals had occurred...
9 Jan 2018 | Judicial Power and the Left, Publications
The objection to the courts on the labour left is based on the nature of law and the nature of the interests served by law. In common law systems, the judges are rule-makers and are indulged to a great extent as authors of the law, including a great deal of private...
9 Jan 2018 | Judicial Power and the Left, Publications
The political foundation of law In his great work, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, originally published in 1939 on the eve of the Second World War, E.H. Carr discussed at length the relationship between law and politics. His purpose was to explain why conflicts in...
9 Jan 2018 | Judicial Power and the Left, Publications
For a long time, many on the left were democratically suspicious of the European Economic Community (EEC), and its successor, the European Community (EC). As the primary organised expression of the left, the post-war Labour Party was dominated by those who wanted to...
9 Jan 2018 | Judicial Power and the Left, Publications
In the months after the US election last November, I often found myself arguing against people in America who thought that Trump and Brexit were the same phenomenon. On my view, Brexit was in fact an innoculation against Trump and the politics of the radical right....
9 Jan 2018 | Judicial Power and the Left, Publications
Introduction What role can courts play in furthering progressive social change? In the view of many lawyers, human rights activists, and left-leaning political activists, courts offer a golden pathway to justice and equality. In their view, courts can uphold rights...
9 Jan 2018 | Judicial Power and the Left, Publications
US Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black characterised courts as “havens of refuge for those who might otherwise suffer because they are helpless, weak, [or] outnumbered …”. This appealing view of the judiciary — as a reliable guardian of minority rights, and an...
9 Jan 2018 | Judicial Power and the Left, Publications
In the thirty years since the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was established, international economic agreements have intruded ever deeper into states’ regulatory and judicial domain, to the point that they now face a multi-faceted backlash. The popular discontent that...
12 Dec 2017 | Human Rights and Political Wrongs, Publications
In Human Rights and Political Wrongs, one of the UK’s most eminent historians of ideas offers a powerful critique of the existing system of human rights law, and an original analysis of the fundamental principles on which any such law should be based. As Noel Malcolm...
19 Oct 2017 | Posts
On 18 October, the Supreme Court decided in Benkharbouche to uphold a judgment of the Court of Appeal ordering disapplication of some provisions of the State Immunity Act 1978 because of their incompatibility with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The Court also...
16 Oct 2017 | Brexit and Judicial Power, Posts
Click here to watch footage of the session. Everyone has questions about Brexit. But perhaps the most significant are those being asked by the House of Commons’ Exiting the EU Committee, which, on Wednesday, held its first hearing of this parliament. The committee’s...
8 Oct 2017 | Posts
The Supreme Court is changing. Three new Justices are taking office, including Lady Black, who is only the second woman to serve on the UK’s highest court. The first, Lady Hale, was this week officially sworn in as President of the Supreme Court, making her the UK’s...
7 Sep 2017 | Publications
In November 2016, days before the Supreme Court hearing in the Miller case, Professor Timothy Endicott (University of Oxford) delivered a lecture for Policy Exchange’s Judicial Power Project on the royal prerogative. Reflecting its weight and importance, the lecture...
4 Sep 2017 | Publications
Download paper Introduction This paper concerns the judicialisation of administrative justice and is prompted by a recent decision of the UK Supreme Court. The case arose in the context of housing, but for these purposes is relevant insofar as it raises critical...
30 Jul 2017 | Posts
The arms trade is very controversial. To some, it is inherently wicked and the UK should have no part of it. To others, the supply of arms to the UK’s allies and strategic partners buttresses stability in the world and boosts the UK’s national security (apart from its...
22 Jul 2017 | Posts
The Labour Party is threatening to vote against the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. The Bill aims to secure legal continuity by transposing EU law into domestic law. Section 5(4) of the Bill carves out an exception to this by providing that the Charter of...
22 Jul 2017 | Posts
The question of whether assisted suicide should be legalised is back before the courts. The High Court this week is being invited to declare that the Suicide Act 1961, which prohibits assisted suicide, is incompatible with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human...
23 Jun 2017 | Brexit and Judicial Power, Posts
In an interview with Germany’s leading daily Die Welt on 18 June 2017, German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel appeared to signal the EU might be willing to relax some of its more extravagant demands in the Brexit negotiations. So far the EU Commission has insisted...
18 Jun 2017 | Brexit and Judicial Power, Posts, Publications: Brexit and Judicial Power
Download pdf The tremors caused by the general election are still working their way through the political system. The implications for the nature of the UK’s future relationship with the EU have been the subject of much speculation. Before too long, however, the...
7 May 2017 | Brexit and Judicial Power, Posts
Leading authority on EU Law, Dr Gunnar Beck (SOAS), writes for Policy Exchange’s Judicial Power Project to explain why, as a matter of law, Britain can leave the EU without any liability for any allegedly outstanding sums under the EU budget. Dr Beck...
27 Apr 2017 | Publications, Publications: Brexit and Judicial Power
Download paper Submission to the Joint Committee on Human Rights 7 April 2017 Dr Jonathan Morgan, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Cambridge Professor Richard Ekins, Associate Professor, University of Oxford Professor Guglielmo Verdirame, Professor of...
27 Mar 2017 | Posts, Publications, Publications: Critiquing Judicial Power
Judges do not understand enough about the parliamentary process to be able to make sense of many of the materials they are required to handle, including the text of Acts of Parliament and subordinate legislation. The starting point for the paper is the increasing...
1 Mar 2017 | Posts
We are happy to welcome the Admin Law Blog and wish it every success. Here is the announcement: The Admin Law Blog is a forum for the discussion of ideas and developments of interest to scholars of administrative law across the common law world. It aims to connect...
