Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Parliamentary Sovereignty
- The UK Constitution
- establishes relationship between the ruler and ruled
- affects everyone in society, so will
always be contentious - LJ Laws The
Good Constituion
- unwritten, supreme,
monarchial, separated
powers, flexible
- Traditional meaning Dicey can make or unmake any law
- One of the two pillars of the
constitution, or one of three
principles
- Parliament cannot
bind itself or
successors
- Ellen St Estates v Minister of Health [1934]
- Maughan LJ
'parliament cannot
bind its successor
in the form of
subsequent
legislation"
- no entrenchment
- unlike in countries with a
written constitution
- Germany - first 19
articles can never be
changed or repealed
- supreme political authority
- Earl of Shaftesbury (1688)
England's parliament's absolute and
supreme power gives life and motion
to the English government
- Should there be PS?
- Hobbes life would be
brutish and cruel - war of
all against all
- Lord Halisham
1976 lecture
"elective
dictatorship"
- Pickin v British Railway Board [1974] Lord Reid "the
idea that a court could disregard any provision in an act
of parliament must seem strange and startling to anyone
with a knowledge of the history of the UK constitution"
- Still sovereign?
- affect of EU
- European Communities Act 1973
- s. 4(2) supremacy of EC law
- Van Gend En Loos [1963]
- "new legal order"
- Costa v ENEL [1964]
- supremacy of national
law would put the
community into
question
- Internationale
Handelgesellschaft
[1970] EC law supreme
- Simmenthal [1978]
- Factortame [1991]
- Lord Bridge - EC established supremacy
even before UK membership, parliament
accepted limitation voluntarily, accepted all
ECJ decisions in past
- Equal Opportunities Case [1994]
- Lord Keith - ECJ cannot strike down
national law but can judicially review
and declare incompatible
- Thoburn v City of Sunderland et al [2002]
Laws LJ there should be a hierachy
recognised: ordinary - constitutional
- Transport Roth Gmbh v SoS Home Department
[2003] British system inbetween PS and CS
- constitutional/fundamental rights
have been recognised and
supported by common law
- Jackson v Attorney General [2005]
- Lord Steyn: no place for Dicey PS in modern UK
- Lord Hope: the fact that this
case is being heard at all shows
there is a part for courts to play in
defining PS
- December 2012 -
attempt to repeal
HR 1998
- R v SoS ex parte Simms [2000] Lord
Hoffman 'fundamental rights cannot be
overriden with general or ambiguous words"
- Can choose it's own composition, procedure and length
- Parliaments Act 1911 - Maximum 5 years
- Previously changed WW2 Prolongation of Parliament Acts 40 - 44