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A realignment of law & power?

10 October 2019 / Michael L Nash
Issue: 7859 / Categories: Features , Constitutional law , Brexit
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Michael L Nash examines the delicate balancing act between the three pillars of power in times of crisis
  • Throughout British history, the balance between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary has always been shifting and realigning. 
  • What role does the monarch play in this balance?

With considerable foresight, Professor Geoffrey Keeton wrote in 1952, in his book The Passing of Parliament: ‘It is in times of difficulty that the dangers from extremists are greatest… it is then that desperate remedies have the best chance of being tried, and when there may be a general disposition to trust a group, or even a single man, with uncontrolled powers, to make far-reaching experiments. Under the present conditions which now exist in Great Britain, this can be quickly and legally achieved by… continuing to exclude or to confine within narrow limits the right of recourse to the ordinary courts.’

This, then, brings into sharp focus the role of the trinity of powers which exist in any country

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

CBI South-East Council—Mike Wilson

CBI South-East Council—Mike Wilson

Blake Morgan managing partner appointed chair of CBI South-East Council

Birketts—Phillippa O’Neill

Birketts—Phillippa O’Neill

Commercial dispute resolution team welcomes partner in Cambridge

Charles Russell Speechlys—Matthew Griffin

Charles Russell Speechlys—Matthew Griffin

Firm strengthens international funds capability with senior hire

NEWS
The proposed £11bn redress scheme following the Supreme Court’s motor finance rulings is analysed in this week’s NLJ by Fred Philpott of Gough Square Chambers
In this week's issue, Stephen Gold, NLJ columnist and former district judge, surveys another eclectic fortnight in procedure. With humour and humanity, he reminds readers that beneath the procedural dust, the law still changes lives
Generative AI isn’t the villain of the courtroom—it’s the misunderstanding of it that’s dangerous, argues Dr Alan Ma of Birmingham City University and the Birmingham Law Society in this week's NLJ
James Naylor of Naylor Solicitors dissects the government’s plan to outlaw upward-only rent review (UORR) clauses in new commercial leases under Schedule 31 of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, in this week's NLJ. The reform, he explains, marks a seismic shift in landlord-tenant power dynamics: rents will no longer rise inexorably, and tenants gain statutory caps and procedural rights
Writing in NLJ this week, James Harrison and Jenna Coad of Penningtons Manches Cooper chart the Privy Council’s demolition of the long-standing ‘shareholder rule’ in Jardine Strategic v Oasis Investments
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