Permission to Appeal in Wightman: A Question of Principle as well as of Procedure?
Author | |
DOI | 10.3366/elr.2019.0557 |
Published date | 01 May 2019 |
Date | 01 May 2019 |
Pages | 272-277 |
On 20 November 2018, the Supreme Court refused permission to appeal the decision of the Inner House in
The UK Supreme Court reasoned that the Scottish Court's reference to the CJEU was a preliminary ruling rather than a final judgment. This may be formally true but fails to recognise that the whole point of this litigation has been to secure a reference to the CJEU and therefore to influence future parliamentary proceedings in an unconstitutional way.
A petition for judicial review was raised by a number of members of the UK, Scottish and European Parliament seeking a declarator that Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union may be unilaterally revoked by the United Kingdom. In other words, they sought confirmation that the UK Parliament could unilaterally terminate the UK's withdrawal from the European Union. They argued that members of the UK Parliament require confirmation on this point to allow them to make an informed choice with regard to the “meaningful vote” on the Brexit deal in terms of section 13 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. The argument goes that, even if presented with a binary choice by the Government between the Brexit deal as negotiated and a “no deal” exit from the EU, Parliament could vote for a third option – revoking Article 50 – leading to the termination of the Brexit process. The argument also obviously has important consequences for the “People's Vote” campaign, which seeks a second referendum on the UK's departure from the EU, with the implication that the UK would revoke Article 50 if the public voted to remain.
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