Tuesday 24 January 2017

Article 50 ruling: Courts should never have got involved in Brexit, says dissenting judge

From the Torygraph, the minority (3/8) verdict in today's case:
Judges should never have been allowed to rule on how Brexit should be triggered because it is a matter for politicians and not the courts, one of the Supreme Court Justices said.
Lord Carnwath, one of three Justices who sided with Theresa May, said the courts had taken “too narrow a view” of the issues at stake and should have left it to Parliament to settle its own affairs.
What's annoying me now is that I wrote much the same myself, and had a long argument about it, and now can't find it. Grrr. It might have been on facebook.

What I tried to say was that "giving" to Commons the "right" to vote on whether we should trigger article 50 is meaningless. If the Commons aren't strong enough to take action, there's no point in a bunch of men in wigs "giving" them their "right". And it seems I am likely to be proved correct: following today's verdict, the government will simply put forward a short simple bill saying "right, let's trigger article 50". And it will pass. Note that today's verdict does helpfully clarify some minor matters for the government:
The court also rejected, unanimously, arguments that the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Northern Ireland Assembly should get to vote on Article 50 before it is triggered.
Also note that Gina Miller appears to be an idiot, but that's rather beside the point.

I also dislike the creeping law-isation of life. The courts butt into too much, and should do less. Unfortunately, there is nothing to control them; they don't make law but they interpret law; so whether they're allowed to inverfere is entirely up to them. As Hobbes said.

The original High Court verdict is worth reading, though.

Refs

Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges
Hayek vs Hobbes and the theory of law
Brexit means Brexit?
Post-referendum thoughts

1 comment:

  1. It was on Facebook. As I recall your argument wasn't that the courts shouldn't be involved... but that any such involvement should only have been allowed if requested by politicians.

    That is, if parliament don't care, that's fine.

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