Table of Contents
Introduction to Sovereignty
Occasionally I give myself leave to write something that it outside my usual hunting grounds of land law, litigation, probate, obscure chancery rules – it’s a good opportunity to learn something and it can make another wise dull day seem somehow interesting. People now benefit from largely free sophisticated AI technology and rather than using it to expand their knowledge, which has value in and of itself, they build a moat around their echo chambers to keep themselves save from reality.
Superior Authority
The idea of parliamentary sovereignty is taught in law school, but after that not much thought goes into it. The idea that the UK Parliament is the sovereign power, that it it the most senior and important power in the UK, has been pushed to the side since 1998, when the UK passed the Human Rights Act – writing the European Convention of Human Rights directly into UK Law. Unarguably, this permits unelected judges to make or break laws, to act with ‘sovereign power’ over claimants and defendants, as though they are law makers themselves.
And, if UK judges don’t ‘get the right answer’ then you can always apply to the European Courts to have them overruled. To a generation of people the idea of the UK being free to determine its own laws is a totally alien concept – our power to make laws is simply limited to those law which we’re permitted to make.
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”
“Who will guard the guards themselves? – This is the famous question from the Roman poet Juvenal (Satire VI, lines 347–348, written around 100 AD).
Current human rights cases which are controversial and troublesome – Rupert Lowe’s defeat in his case against the Parliamentary ‘complaint’s procedure’ is a case in point [whatever you make of his political views] – Powers which were always the reserve of MPs, people who make our laws and are elected, are now granted to people who are not elected. The courts will not interfere with this parliamentary complaint process, a process used by people who are not elected against people who are. Surely this cannot be right. This is not a Human Rights Act case – but it is a further weakening of Parliament as the Sovereign Power in the UK if those powers can be used by people who are unelected
Why does it matter?
Not everything that goes on in Parliament is protected by Parliamentary privilege – i.e. the Spencer Perceval Assassination (May 11, 1812). But the courts have always recognised the limits of their authority – that they can’t impose limits on our law makers. If murder in the building is within the courts jurisdiction, then surely any complaint about someone’s behaviour ? John Bellingham was indicted for wilful murder, tried at the Old Bailey (London’s central criminal court), convicted by a jury, and sentenced to death. He was hanged at Newgate Prison just one week after the shooting (May 18, 1812).
Having unelected minions exerting authority over our elected ones, regardless of how reprehensible or otherwise you find their views, shows what dangerous times we live in.
Footnote – For the sake of balance – Angela Rayner’s tax query was probably settled fairly.
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