Judicial Review Comes To Britain

The Great Britain Supreme Court's asset today that the Prime Minister's prorogation of Parliament was unlawful is a watershed for the British Constitution. In this determination together with its 2017 ruling that Brexit must live on approved past times Parliament, the courts convey adopted a shape of "representation-reinforcement" theory. What I hateful past times that is that the Court is non invalidating acts of Parliament every bit unconstitutional. Instead, the decisions are defending parliamentary sovereignty past times turning the unwritten constitutional conventions of Great Britain into judicial doctrine. As the Court explained today:

For the purposes of the introduce case, therefore, the relevant bound upon the mightiness to prorogue tin live on expressed inwards this way: that a determination to prorogue Parliament (or to suggest the monarch to prorogue Parliament) volition live on unlawful if the prorogation has the lawsuit of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the mightiness of Parliament to behaviour out its constitutional functions every bit a legislature together with every bit the torso responsible for the supervision of the executive.

One tin run into a path, though, to the expansion of these precedents someday to an actual invalidation of an Act of Parliament that inwards roughly feel tin live on said to frustrate the mightiness of Parliament to behaviour out its constitutional functions. Perhaps non inwards my lifetime, but the foundation is there.

These decisions every bit good illustrate the practical signal that constitutional limits on authorities mightiness come upward when a authorities (or a crucial component division of government) is weak. The barons wrested Magna Carta from King John because he was unpopular together with needed coin to struggle a unusual war. The American Presidency was placed nether greater restrictions during together with afterward Watergate because President Nixon was highly unpopular. Now a minority authorities inwards Great Britain is existence mauled past times the courts.