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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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”,...
2 Dec 2016 | Posts, Publications, Publications: Brexit and Judicial Power, Publications: Critiquing Judicial Power
Following on from his three Judicial Power Project papers on Miller, Professor John Finnis delivered the Sir Thomas More Lecture at Lincoln’s Inn on ‘Brexit and the Balance of Our Constitution’, on 1 December 2016. The lecture provided powerful...
1 Dec 2016 | Brexit and Judicial Power, Posts, Publications, Publications: Brexit and Judicial Power
The Government’s argument in the Miller case is that triggering Article 50 lies within the power of the Crown to make and unmake international treaties – a power the leading litigant, Gina Miller, has termed ‘this ancient, secretive Royal...
24 Nov 2016 | ALBA Papers on Judicial Activism, Posts, Publications, Publications: ALBA Papers on Judicial Activism, Publications: Critiquing Judicial Power
Part of our series on “Debating Judicial Power: Papers from the ALBA Summer Conference”. A pdf version of this post can be found here. These brief marginal comments on Dame Elisabeth Laing’s interesting, important, and enviably readable “shop floor” reflections in her...
22 Nov 2016 | ALBA Papers on Judicial Activism, Posts, Publications, Publications: ALBA Papers on Judicial Activism
Download Elisabeth Laing paper John Finnis reply Today we launch this series with a paper by High Court judge Dame Elisabeth Laing entitled ‘Two Cheers for Judicial Activism’. The premise of the paper is that ‘there is a thing, which for want of a better label, we can...
2 Nov 2016 | Brexit and Judicial Power, Publications, Publications: Brexit and Judicial Power
This post is excerpted from a second short paper published today, available here: Download paper In a Judicial Power Project paper of 26 October, Terminating Treaty-based UK Rights, I argued that UK law and constitutional practice about double tax treaties provides a...
26 Oct 2016 | Brexit and Judicial Power, Publications, Publications: Brexit and Judicial Power
This post is excerpted from a short paper published today, available here: Download paper Oral argument in the Brexit Case in the Administrative Court last week left an easy case looking a bit difficult. It allowed Lord Pannick QC, for the lead claimant, to reiterate...
20 Oct 2016 | Publications, Publications: Brexit and Judicial Power
Download pdf Submission to the Joint Committee on Human Rights 10 October 2016 Gunnar Beck, 1 Essex Court, former advisor to the European Scrutiny Committee of the House of Commons Dominic Burbidge, Research Fellow, Judicial Power Project Richard Ekins, Associate...
