I was given the honour of being a panellist (along with Baroness Butler-Sloss, Lord Young of Cookham and Professor Andrew Blick) at a Parliament Week schools event organised by Learn with the Lords and the Constitution Society on the theme of "20 years after the Constitutional Reform Act, where does sovereignty lie in the [...]
The phrase "rule of law" has been used, on average, more than three times on every parliamentary sitting day over the past 10 years. But what does it mean? Has the UK anything to learn from the definition of the phrase by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, or from the experience [...]
Many people are more learned than I am in European human rights law, and many others more thoroughly immersed in UK national security. But having spent significant time in each of those worlds over the past 30 years, including through my work as Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation and as a practitioner in Strasbourg, [...]
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 [...]
The Investigatory Powers Act 2016 became law on 29 November, when it received Royal Assent. It is currently being brought into force in stages. This post, originally composed on 3 December 2016, is my big-picture reaction to the Act, which was influenced by my reports A Question of Trust (June 2015) and Report of Bulk Powers Review (August [...]
