Monthly Archives: October 2014

Sturgeon Demands Scottish Veto Over Brexit

Posted on October 30, 2014 by jasonloch

Nicola Sturgeon, the Deputy First Minister of Scotland, has made headlines by arguing that any attempt to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union should have the backing of all four nations. At the moment, foreign affairs are the exclusive … Continue reading →

Posted in Devolution | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Why Does Britain’s Privy Council Still Hear Appeals from New Zealand?

Posted on October 28, 2014 by jasonloch

Yesterday, a New Zealander named Teina Pora and his lawyers boarded a flight to London. They are traveling there in a bid to quash Pora’s 1994 conviction for the rape and murder of Susan Burdett. After exhausting his appeals in New … Continue reading →

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Peers Resist Changes To Judicial Review

Posted on October 27, 2014 by jasonloch

The Government suffered a defeat today in the House of Lords as peers rejected Chris Grayling’s attempt to make it more difficult for people to apply for judicial review. Clause 70 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill would have required the High Court to dismiss … Continue reading →

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Remembering the Whitlam Dismissal

Posted on October 21, 2014 by jasonloch

Gough Whitlam died today at the age of 98. His death comes just a few weeks shy of the thirty-ninth anniversary of his dismissal at the hands of the Governor-General. This momentous event was one of the defining moments of Australian politics, … Continue reading →

Posted in Australian Constitution | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Case for Ditching the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011

Posted on October 19, 2014 by jasonloch

The BBC’s Mark D’Arcy has predicted that the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011 might be marked for repeal if a majority Government takes office in May. That would be a welcome turn of events, as I suspect that Act may turn out to be one of … Continue reading →

Posted in British Parliament | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Scottish Devolution: Parties Outline More Powers for Scotland

Posted on October 15, 2014 by jasonloch

As the work of the Smith Commission[1] gets underway, political parties have unveiled their proposals for further Scottish devolution. Proposals from the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, and Labour are set out in a Command Paper that was published recently, while the Scottish … Continue reading →

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Why Can’t MPs Resign From the House of Commons?

Posted on October 13, 2014 by jasonloch

On September 30, HM Treasury announced that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had appointed ex-Tory MP Mark Reckless to the office of ‘Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern.’ A few days earlier, Reckless announced that he was defecting to the … Continue reading →

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Grayling Grumbles About the ECHR

Posted on October 6, 2014 by jasonloch

Last week, Chris Grayling, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, announced plans to drastically overhaul Britain’s human rights laws. If Grayling has his way, decisions of the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights will be purely advisory, and Parliament … Continue reading →

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