Law According To A King

Yesterday, the UK Supreme Court ruled on what is possibly the most important constitutional law case in a generation. In the case of R (Miller) v Prime Minister [2019] UKSC 41, the court handed down a judgment that we will be seeing the reverberations of for decades to come. It is an intensely political case, but the court were keen to set aside partisanship and rule simply on the law as they saw it. You may recall, a few weeks ago when Johnson announced the prorogation of Parliament, I wrote a post saying that it was a legal exercise of the prerogative powers, but evidently I was too hasty in making this judgment. Lady Hale, the President of the court, handed down a unanimous judgment that declared the prorogation was illegal, and thus, in effect, didn't happen at all. But let's look at how they came to this decision, and the key parts of their judgment... For some background: The UK decided in a referendum in 2016 to leave the EU. Whilst the result was not legally bind...

Before Parliament was prorogued, MPs from across the House passed the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019, which requires the Prime Minister to request an extension to the art.50 deadline in order to prevent a 'no deal' Brexit. Interestingly, there have been rumours that the government is seeking to challenge this law in court, interpret it as broadly as possible, or ignore it entirely. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has been reported as saying he will "test to the limit" this new legislation in order to ensure that the UK leaves the EU by the October 31st deadline, as reported by the Daily Mail .  But how can you test legislation? Dicey wrote that an Act of Parliament, validly passed, cannot be brought into question in any court, but that still allows our judges to interpret legislation, even perhaps to the extent of ignoring its main purpose.  There are three main different types of statutory interpretation: Literal, 'The Golden Rule', a...

First of all, I have never studied intellectual property law, particularly US intellectual property law, and so I have dealt with this from a broad perspective as if it was set in the UK. Anyway, here goes... If you haven't heard of the Taylor Swift drama with Scooter Braun - get up to date on pop culture. Swift signed a contract with Big Machine Records in 2004 at the age of 15 for, presumably, 6 records before the contract could be renewed. She left BMR after her sixth album, reputation, and signed with a new record company to release her seventh album, Lover. BMR retain ownership of her masters, and the company has since been sold to Scooter Braun, who isn't exactly Swift's friend, and Swift has publicly denounced Braun and his business ethics and behaviour, and tried to get her masters back. This issue has a few legal implications in contract and intellectual property, and these will be dealt with in turn. What are Taylor Swift's options? Contract Swift sign...

The last three years have been tense to say the least. The country is still divided on Brexit, with polls now showing a slight lean towards Remain. Since the 2016 referendum, the Liberal Democrats and Greens have campaigned furiously for a second referendum, whilst Labour and the Tories have largely rejected this. But what would a second referendum do? First of all, a second referendum is permitted by the law. Under the European Union Referendum Act 2015 the result of the Brexit vote was purely advisory. Neither Parliament nor the government is bound to deliver Brexit - it was merely an indication of public opinion. Most referendums are advisory, it is worth noting, with explicit language in legislation entitling the government to ignore the vote (though they never have). The judgment in R (Miller) v Brexit Secretary also stressed the advisory nature of the referendum, and underlined the importance of parliamentary sovereignty. One thing that is interesting is how both sides increa...