Weekly Update

Waiting for the next Brexit development can be difficult when the stakes are so high for the Rule of Law, as the Bingham Centre examined in last week's report on No Deal Brexit, Business and the Rule of Law. This week Scotland's highest court, the Inner House of the Court of Session, decided to wait until 21 October to hear further argument about the Prime Minister's duty to request a Brexit extension by 19 October in circumstances contemplated by the Benn Act (failure to reach a Brexit agreement subsequently approved by the House of Commons, or to secure its approval for no-deal).

Until the Benn Act's deadline has passed, 'The political debate requires to be played out in the appropriate forum,' the court said. The Inner House also referred to 'core principles of constitutional propriety and of the mutual trust that is the bedrock of the relationship between the court and the Crown', which Lord Pentland, who first heard this case in Outer House, had invoked when accepting government lawyers' assurances that the Benn Act would be honoured in both letter and spirit.

These statements by senior UK judges show their acute awareness that the Rule of Law depends not simply on their judgments, but also in a fundamental way on the Executive recognising and abiding by its legal obligations.

As usual, the Bingham Centre's activities this week have examined Rule of Law challenges arising from the Brexit process - for both the UK and the EU - as well as other Rule of Law issues of the present and the likely near future (see our blog on Automatic Facial Recognition).

Read our Weekly Update here