Parliamentary sovereignty in the United Kingdom
Parliamentary sovereignty is a longstanding concept central to the functioning of the constitution of the United Kingdom, but which is also not fully defined and has long been debated.
Parliamentary sovereignty is a description of the extent to which the Parliament of the United Kingdom has absolute and unlimited power.
Formally speaking however, the present state that is the UK is descended from the international Treaty of Union between England and Scotland in 1706/7 which led to the creation of the "Kingdom of Great Britain".
It is clear that the terms of that Treaty stated that certain of its provisions could not be altered, for example the separate existence of the Scottish legal system,[3] and formally, these restrictions are a continuing limitation on the sovereignty of the UK Parliament.
This has also been reconsidered by constitutional theorists including Sir William Wade and Trevor Allan in light of the European Communities Act 1972 and other provisions relating to membership of the European Union, and the position of the Human Rights Act 1998 and any attempts to make this or other legislation entrenched.
[citation needed] These issues remain contested, although the United Kingdom has since ceased membership of the European Union and is no longer subject to its treaties.
[4] While writer John Austin and others have looked to combine parliamentary and national sovereignty, this view is not universally held.
At the same time, it recognised the common law, existing statutory provisions, and excluded the breach of royal proclamations from the death penalty.
A review by Chief Justice Edward Coke in 1610, the Case of Proclamations, established that Parliament had the sole right to legislate, but the Crown could enforce it.
[7] The concept of parliamentary sovereignty was central to the English Civil War: Royalists argued that power was held by the king, and delegated to Parliament, a view which was challenged by the Parliamentarians.
[9] That led the Earl of Shaftesbury to declare in 1689, "The Parliament of England is that supreme and absolute power, which gives life and motion to the English government".
[14] For example, the case of Pickin v British Railways Board was dismissed because it relied on the standing order process not having been fulfilled.
Fact No 3: The British Parliament in Westminister retains the final right to repeal the Act that took us into the Common Market on 1 January 1973.
Thus our continued membership will depend on the continuing assent of ParliamentA few days following the outcome of the referendum in which the United Kingdom had confirmed its continued membership "Yes" of the communities in an interview for the Daily Telegraph the then Ulster Unionist (UUP) MP for South Down Enoch Powell confirmed this assessment within the pamphlet on Parliament's role in the future of British EC membership: [21] 'Never again by the necessity of an axiom, will an Englishman live for his country or die for his country: The country for which people live and die was obsolete and we have abolished it.
[22] The Factortame case was considered to be revolutionary by Sir William Wade, who cited in particular Lord Bridge's statement that "there is nothing in any way novel in according supremacy to rules of Community law in areas to which they apply and to insist that... national courts must not be prohibited by rules of national law from granting interim relief in appropriate cases is no more than a logical recognition of that supremacy", which Wade characterises a clear statement that parliament can bind its successors and is therefore a very significant break from traditional thinking.
[23] Trevor Allan, argued, however, that the change in rule was accepted by the existing order because of strong legal reasons.
Since legal reasons existed, the House of Lords had, instead, determined what the current system suggested under new circumstances and so no revolution had occurred.
Some jurists have suggested that the Acts of Union 1707 place limits on parliamentary sovereignty and its application to Scotland.
[27][28][29] Also, in Gibson v Lord Advocate, Lord Keith was circumspect about how Scottish courts would deal with an Act, which would substantially alter or negate the essential provisions of the 1707 Act, such as the abolition of the Court of Session or the Church of Scotland or the substitution of English law for Scots law.
[34][35] The principle of reading down aims to preserve parliamentary sovereignty by minimizing conflicts between UK law and the ECHR, without allowing the courts to strike down primary legislation.
[37] In that case, the court will issue a "declaration of incompatibility," which is non-binding upon parliament by the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty.
[32] They looked to distinguish the case from that of Pickin v British Railways Board, where the unequivocal belief of the judges had been that "the courts in this country have no power to declare enacted law to be invalid".
The judges believed that whereas Pickin had challenged the inner workings of Parliament, which a court could not do, Jackson questioned the interpretation of a statute.
