Constitutions and Human Rights

Miller: A Vital Reaffirmation of Parliamentary Sovereignty

In a ringing defence of the power of Parliament against the executive, the Supreme Court today held that the decision to trigger the process of leaving the EU cannot be...

Decolonizing Human Rights: Sovereignty, Tactics and Disruption

For those of us engaged with human rights, as students, activists and lawyers, I want to suggest that at some point in our engagement with rights discourses, we have had...

Swazi Court Reiterates Prominence of Human Rights in their Home-Grown Constitution

In September 2016, the High Court in Swaziland ruled that certain provisions in the Sedition and Subversive Activities and Suppression of Terrorism Acts were unconstitutional. The Court held that the...

Miller in the Supreme Court: The Scottish Case

In the Miller case, the High Court determined that the UK Government may not trigger Article 50 by use of the prerogative alone. Parliamentary authorisation must be obtained, apparently through...

What Are Human Rights?

A conversation between Kate O’Regan, Director of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford, and Sandy Fredman, Professor of Law, University of Oxford and Director of...

Miller: Rights and Revocability

There has been much discussion as to whether Article 50 once triggered is revocable. There is no intention to revisit the contending arguments here, save to say that the ultimate...

Miller: Alternative Syllogisms

Professor Finnis posed a powerful challenge to the Miller decision by contending that the claimant’s argument was based on the following syllogistic fallacy. (1) Statutory rights enacted by Parliament cannot...

R (Miller) v The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union – Substance over Form?

In a ground-breaking decision, the High Court issued a declaratory order that ‘the Secretary of State does not have power under the Crown’s prerogative to give notice pursuant to Article...

EU Rights as British Rights

According to a carefully argued contribution by Professor Finnis in the Miller debate, rights under the European Communities Act 1972 ‘are not “statutory rights enacted by Parliament”’; they are only...

The Least Dangerous Branch: Whose Role is it to Protect Parliamentary Sovereignty? Miller and the Human Rights Implications of Brexit

One of the extraordinary outcomes of the Brexit referendum has been the insistence that the Government is entitled to exercise its powers in relation to the Brexit process without involving...

Miller: Winning Battles and Losing Wars

The claimants in Miller won the first round of the legal battle, since the High Court concluded that Parliament’s approval had to be forthcoming before Article 50 could be triggered....

A First Take on Miller – with a Note on the Human Rights Perspective

The High Court today handed down its decision in Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. As has now been widely reported, the High Court found that...