1 Mar 2018 | Judicial Review and Judicial Independence
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...
26 Feb 2018 | News
Representatives of Policy Exchange’s Judicial Power Project have submitted written evidence to the inquiry by Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights, Human Rights: Attitudes to Enforcement. The evidence was complied by Professor Richard Ekins, the...
6 Feb 2018 | Posts
The latest judgment in the saga of data retention provides further evidence of the problems and uncertainties created by the European Court of Justice. First a recap on the story so far. Since the dawn of telecommunications the companies involved have been recording...
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...
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 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...
22 Feb 2017 | Posts
“greater assertiveness overall is consistent with the less deferential approach towards authority taken by today’s judges, who grew to maturity in the intellectual climate of the Sixties and Seventies and who therefore feel less hidebound by tradition than their...
2 Feb 2017 | ALBA Papers on Judicial Activism, Posts, Publications: ALBA Papers on Judicial Activism
Part of our series on “Debating Judicial Power: Papers from the ALBA Summer Conference”. In his new paper, Richard Ekins offers an ambitious and wide-ranging narrative of judicial power. He argues that a ‘new understanding’ of judicial power is ascendant. He seeks to...
1 Feb 2017 | ALBA Papers on Judicial Activism, Posts, Publications: ALBA Papers on Judicial Activism
Judicial power in the new UK constitution is on the rise. This is hardly a remarkable claim: Lord Neuberger and Lady Hale, for example, each take the expansion of judicial power to be an undeniable feature of the change over time in our governing arrangements. In a...
25 Jan 2017 | Posts
Editor’s Note: Policy Exchange’s Judicial Power Project invited leading academics and practitioners to offer short comments on the Supreme Court’s decision on Article 50 in R(Miller and Dos Santos) v Secretary of State for Exiting the EU. We sought contributions from...
25 Jan 2017 | Posts
1. The European Communities Act 1972 was visibly crafted in every detail for a precise political-constitutional purpose, ignored by the Miller majority. The Act was to enable the UK to join the Communities – if and when the Government ratified the Accession Treaty –...
24 Jan 2017 | Posts
This is a very disappointing decision which is not justified by long-standing legal principle. The claim should have failed. It is encouraging that at least some Justices saw through the claimant’s strained legal arguments. The High Court mishandled the relevant law,...
11 Jan 2017 | Posts
On 21st December 2016 the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) delivered judgment on the joined cases of Tele2 Sverige from Sweden and the Davis/Watson reference from the UK. The case was discussed yesterday on this site by Dr Gunnar Beck. My own view is that the CJEU’s...
10 Jan 2017 | Posts
The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights precludes the “general and indiscriminate retention of traffic data and location data” and “the Member States may not impose a general obligation to retain data on providers of electronic communications services.” This is clear...
4 Jan 2017 | Brexit and Judicial Power, Posts, Publications, Publications: Brexit and Judicial Power
Download paper The legal controversy in the Miller case may now be distilled in the following way. The government argues that it has a general power to withdraw from treaties, which it certainly does. The claimants argue that the executive does not have a power to...
19 Dec 2016 | Posts
Download pdf Gunnar Beck, 1 Essex Court, former advisor to the European Scrutiny Committee of the House of Commons Richard Ekins, Associate Professor, University of Oxford, Head of the Judicial Power Project John Finnis, Professor Emeritus in the University of Oxford,...
16 Dec 2016 | ALBA Papers on Judicial Activism, Posts
Part of our series on “Debating Judicial Power: Papers from the ALBA Summer Conference”. A pdf version of this post can be found here. Maya Lester, firstly, accuses Leave campaigners of populist attacks on the Luxembourg Court; secondly, is unsure what critics mean by...
15 Dec 2016 | ALBA Papers on Judicial Activism, Posts, Publications, Publications: ALBA Papers on Judicial Activism
In the third part of our series on Debating Judicial Power: Papers from the ALBA Summer Conference, Maya Lester QC from Brick Court Chambers writes on ‘The “Rogue” European Court in the Campaign for Brexit’. With debate about judicial activism playing a...
13 Dec 2016 | ALBA Papers on Judicial Activism, Posts, Publications, Publications: ALBA Papers on Judicial Activism
Part of our series on “Debating Judicial Power: Papers from the ALBA Summer Conference”. A pdf version of this post can be found here. 1. Sir John Laws writes, whether on or off the bench, with brilliance and brio. He presents an apparently utterly persuasive account...
12 Dec 2016 | ALBA Papers on Judicial Activism, Posts, Publications, Publications: ALBA Papers on Judicial Activism
Download John Laws paper Christopher Forsyth reply In the second part of our series on Debating Judicial Power: Papers from the ALBA Summer Conference, Sir John Laws, who served from 1999-2016 as a Lord Justice of Appeal, shares his thoughts on “Judicial Activism”,...
6 Dec 2016 | Posts
Brexit and Devolution Given the complexity of the United Kingdom’s system of multi-layered governance, and the intertwining of policy competences across European, UK-wide and devolved levels, the devolved governments and legislatures necessarily have a strong interest...
