I gave a lecture last night to the Statute Law Society on the subject of Writing a Constitution. Our constitution is sick (though its condition is chronic rather than acute); a written constitution is a realistic proposition, for which there are many precedents within the Westminster family; the public seems at least mildly favourable [...]
My independent Investigatory Powers Act review was announced on 17 January. I am conducting the review together with a small strap-cleared team comprising Natasha Barnes, barrister at 1 Crown Office Row John Davies, a member of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Technology Advisory Panel. The scope of my review is determined by: The Home [...]
"National Security and the Law" was the subject of this year's Birkenhead Lecture. It contains a description and assessment of the current state of our law on counter-terrorism, hostile state activity and surveillance - and on the vital court and oversight mechanisms that apply to it. The lecture was delivered at Gray's Inn on [...]
What use is the House of Lords? What contribution is made by peers with experience as lawyers and judges? How could the Lords be reformed, and does it make sense to speak of the intention of Parliament? I addressed these topics in a Middle Temple Treasurer's Lecture on 14 October. The full text is [...]
The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill raises serious concerns for legal certainty and - more fundamentally still - for the role of Parliament in law-making. An excellent and impartial introduction to the Bill is in this report from the House of Commons library.My initial thoughts on the delegated powers in the Bill [...]
This is my contribution to the consultation on the future siting of the House of Lords. Future site of the HL My theme is that four challenges - Covid-inspired virtual working, mounting public debt, negative public perceptions and uncertainty over the future size of the House - have resulted in a single great opportunity: to [...]
We are advised to stay at home these days, probably for good reason. But as of this afternoon, that advice became a legally binding rule. The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020 were issued and took effect at 1pm today. They will lapse if Parliament has not approved them by mid-May. But in the [...]
Ian Forrester, a Scottish QC who long practised law in Brussels, served as a Judge of the General Court of the European Union from 2015 to 2020. He delivered this farewell speech in the Court on 6 February. Both moving and informative, it contains Ian's reflections on Britain (and Scotland) in and out of Europe, [...]
I gave a lecture last night at Clifford Chance in London on "Taming the Wild West: Government and the Internet". It touches on a number of currently contested areas of law and policy ranging from state surveillance and "surveillance capitalism" to online harms, antitrust and the corporation as courthouse. If the lecture were a website, [...]
Extremism and the Law was the subject of my Middle Temple Treasurer's Lecture on Monday evening. It was attended by a wonderfully diverse crowd, ranging from Supreme Court Justices to East London sixth-formers who had got to hear about it through The Big Voice, a legal outreach charity. The lecture is framed by the experience [...]
