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A Great Conspicuous Tribunal? The UK Supreme Court

Document Cited authorities 1 Cited in Related
Vincent
Date01 June 2020
Published date01 June 2020
AuthorChris Hanretty
DOI10.1177/2041905820933366
8 POLITICAL INSIGHT • JUNE 2020
Last October, the Supreme Court
of the United Kingdom celebrated
its ten-year anniversary. To
commemorate the occasion, the
court held an ‘open day’. Although written
by the court’s communications team, the
website copy announcing the event was
a masterclass in judicial understatement.
Written in the aftermath of the court’s
prorogation decision, it noted that ‘the
Supreme Court has featured regularly in
the news in recent months’. It had scarcely
been out of the news: the ruling that Boris
Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament was
A Great Conspicuous
Tribunal? The UK
Supreme Court
From Article 50 to the prorogation of Parliament, Britain’s Supreme
Court has been in the eye of political storms as never before. As it
celebrates its tenth anniversary, Chris Hanretty examines the Court’s
changing role in British public life.
‘unlawful’ was the most news-worthy decision
since the court’s 2017 verdict that the UK
could not exit the European Union without
parliamentary approval, and that decision, in
turn, was the most newsworthy decision the
court had ever taken.
The Supreme Court’s public prole has
been transformed by Brexit – but is this just
a passing phase in the court’s development,
or must we who study politics now devote
to the Supreme Court the same amount
of scholarly attention we would devote to
Parliament or the party system? As the author

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