Law According To A King

The debate as to how far the office of the Prime Minister has evolved to become more like that of a President is a hot one in political and constitutional theory, but it does have some practical ramifications for the way we think about our leaders. This post shall take a look at the arguments for and against the 'presidentialisation' of the prime minister, and examine the consequences for either side.  Firstly, it is widely accepted that the executive office of the PM has grown in recent decades. In 1970, the cabinet office had just 600 staff, but under Tony Blair, that number grew to over 2,500. As a comparison, the executive office of the President has around 4,000 - though most scholars agree this growth can be attributed to the expansion of the administrative state since the end of WWII. Better, Dowding argues, to look at the role of the executive office. Dowding says the role of staffers in the PM's office is largely based around coordination across government, and the...

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...

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...