Mavericks or misconstruction? A reply to Campbell and Allan
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Author | STEPHANIE PALMER,STEVIE MARTIN |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12279 |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
DOI: ./j ols.
ARTICLE
Mavericks or misconstruction? A reply to
Campbell and Allan
STEPHANIE PALMER STEVIE MARTIN
Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge,
West Road, Cambridge, CB DZ,
England
Correspondingauthor
StephaniePalmer, Faculty of Law,Uni-
versityof Cambridge, West Road, Cam-
bridge,CB DZ, England
Email:sp@cam.ac.uk
Abstract
In a jurisdiction without a codified constitution clearly
demarcating the role of the courts, and given the central-
ity of the principle of parliamentary sovereignty to the
United Kingdom’s constitutional framework, criticism
of the courts for overstepping the mark – particularly
in politically contentious cases – is par for the course.
In their article, Professors David Campbell and
James Allan offer a criticism of the Supreme Court for
what they describe as its surreptitious creation of judicial
supremacy at the expense of parliamentary sovereignty.
In support of their claim, the authors examine two par-
ticularly significant judgments: R (Miller and another)
v. Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union and
Re Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission’s Appli-
cation for Judicial Review. This reply discusses several
problematic aspects of the authors’ critique of those
judgments, demonstrating that, contrary to the authors’
claims, these cases do not provide evidence of a surrepti-
tious attempt by the Supreme Court to expand its power.
1 INTRODUCTION
In their recent article in the pages of this journal, ‘Procedural Innovation and the Surrepti-
tious Creation of Judicial Supremacy in the United Kingdom’,David Campbell and James
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits
use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or
adaptations are made.
© The Authors. Journal of Law and Society published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of CardiffUniversity (CU).
D. Campbell and J. Allan, ‘Procedural Innovation and the Surreptitious Creation of Judicial Supremacyin the United
Kingdom’ () J. of Law and Society .
106 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jols J.Law Soc. ;:–.
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