Supreme Court president proud of prorogation ruling
SUPREME Court president Lady Hale has told Guernsey lawyers of her pride in the ruling that Boris Johnson’s advice to the Queen that parliament should be suspended for five weeks was unlawful.
The historic judgment was made during the height of the Brexit crisis in September and Lady Hale spoke about it during a special event organised by the Guernsey International Legal Association held at the Royal Court.
‘I’m proud of the prorogation ruling. I’m proud of that because it was constitutionally the right decision. I’m proud of it because 11 justices agreed and worked together to produce an agreed judgment. And I’m proud of it because we did it so quickly, quickly enough to have an effect.’
Explaining how the justices met to discuss cases after hearings, she went on: ‘I’m not sure that I’m saying anything out of turn when I say that people who watched the prorogation hearing, and watched the third day, will have picked up that we were very interested in what the remedy was.
‘That gives us a message doesn’t it? Because we wouldn’t have been so interested in the remedy if we haven’t reached, at least, a provisional view that the advice was unlawful. It was quite interesting how unprepared some of counsel were in advance of the questions that we asked.
‘We were already formulating views and it meant that when we had our meeting we were basically firming up, tidying up, making much tighter the sort of provisional views that we had earlier.’
Asked what impact Brexit could have on the operation of the Supreme Court, she said it was ‘almost impossible to give a firm answer’ because so much depended on whether it happened and whether transitional arrangements were in place.
Lady Hale also highlighted two other cases that she was proud of particularly.
One was an immigration case where the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was applied which makes the best needs of the child the first priority. It had had an effect on public law decision-making.
A further case was where the court decided that the ‘word violence covered more than hitting’ and extended it to other forms of abuse now known as coercive control.
