Brexit case not politics - top judge
BRITAIN: The UK’S most senior judge hit back at accusations that justices are straying into politics as he opened the historic hearing yesterday on whether parliament must approve Brexit.
Lord Neuberger, the Supreme Court president, is heading an unprecedented panel of 11 justices to hear the highly charged appeal against a High Court ruling.
He insisted the case was to do with legal issues and judges would decide the case according to law.
He announced that none of the justices would be withdrawing from the case - despite some calls for one or two to do so - after asking all those involved if that was what they wanted.
‘‘Without exception, all parties to the appeal have stated that they have no objection to any of us sitting on this appeal.’’
Neuberger’s wife has been criticised for tweeting about the Brexit vote as ‘‘mad and bad’’ and Lady Hale, deputy president, came under fire for comments.
Neuberger said: ‘‘I would like to to remind everyone who has taken an interest in these proceedings that the Supreme Court exists to decide points of law which fall within its jurisdiction.
‘‘The justices of the court are of course aware of the strong feelings associated with the many wider political questions surrounding the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union. However, as will be apparent from the arguments before us, those wider political arguments are not the subject of the appeal.
‘‘This appeal is concerned with legal issues and as judges our duty is to consider those issues impartially and to decide the case according to the law. That is what we shall do.’’
The attorney-general, Jeremy Wright, QC, is appealing against the High Court decision which said that invoking Article 50 had to be approved by a vote of parliament and could not just be executed by the government.
Wright told the justices that they had to decide a clear question: whether the government had the legal [prerogative] powers to give notice under Article 50 to trigger the withdrawal from the EU or whether further parliamentary approval was required.
The question was not, however, a narrow one. ‘‘It raises issues going to the very heart of our constitutional settlement,’’ he said.
The referendum legislation had been passed with the ‘‘clear expectation’’ that the government would implement the result, he added.
The High Court decision had wrongly dismissed the referendum as a ‘‘political event’’ of little significance in law. The government was elected on a pledge to hold an in/out referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU.
‘‘The referendum was conducted, we say, in the universal expectation, including in parliament, that the government would implement its result,’’ he said.
Wright said the use of the prerogative would be lawful. The foreign affairs prerogative was not ‘‘an ancient relic’’, but a ‘‘constitutional necessity.’’
EU rights and obligations were negotiated and agreed by government and were created and rose on the ‘‘international law plane’’.
However, parliament was sovereign and could, if it chose, legislate to limit the prerogative and had done so at times sparingly and explicitly, he said.
It had not, however, restricted the government’s power to trigger Article 50 - and therefore that did not need further parliamentary approval.
Wright told the judges that triggering Article 50 ‘‘will not be an exercise of the prerogative right on a whim or out of the blue’’, but part of a process in which ‘‘parliament has been fully and consciously involved’’.
‘‘If this is all about standing up for parliament, I say parliament can stand up for itself.’’- The Times