A post-European British constitution: plus ça change?

Speaker: Dr Mark Elliott (University of Cambridge)
Chair: Lord Reed, UK Supreme Court
Admission: Free
Accreditation: This event is accredited with 1 CPD hour with the SRA (BSB pending)
Series: Current Legal Problems 2014-15

The United Kingdom’s constitution is fast approaching a fork in the road that separates two paths leading to different constitutional futures. The first path represents a continuation of our journey as part of the mainstream of European nations that are parties to the European Convention on Human Rights and members of the European Union. The second path represents the constitutional journey that would be undertaken if the UK were to withdraw from the ECHR or the EU.

In this lecture, I will argue that although the fork in the road is one of historic significance, and that choosing the second path would lead us into uncertain constitutional territory, the UK system would nevertheless remain profoundly influenced by the constitutional changes wrought by our long-standing membership of the Council of Europe and the EU. A post-European British constitution would be significantly distinct from its pre-European counterpart, and the normative legacy bequeathed to the UK by its European associations would likely, at least some extent, survive institutional withdrawal. And while the significance of this point will be greater if the non-European path is chosen, it is in fact relevant to our understanding of the British constitution whichever of the two paths represents our constitutional future.

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About the speaker

Dr Elliott was appointed to a fellowship at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, in 1999 and to a lectureship at the Faculty of Law in 2000. He has taught at Cambridge since then, where he is now Reader in Public Law. He is a member of the Faculty’s Centre for Public Law and was the Legal Research Foundation Visiting Scholar at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 2011. He is also a Fellow of the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, which is part of the British Institute for International and Comparative Law, and the co-convener of a major international conference on public law which will take place in Cambridge in September 2014, bringing together leading scholars from across the common law world.

Mark has published across a broad range of topics within the general field of public law, addressing areas including judicial review, devolution, local government, parliamentary sovereignty, judicial control of prerogative power, public sector ombudsmen, tribunals, public inquiries, the constitutional implications of the “war on terror” and the nature and implications of bills of rights. His work is animated by an underlying concern to draw together constitutional theory and public law doctrine in ways that allow each to gain from and feed into the other.

About Current Legal Problems

The Current Legal Problems annual lecture series was established over sixty years ago. The lectures are public, delivered on a weekly basis and chaired by members of the judiciary.

The Current Legal Problems (CLP) annual volume is published on behalf of UCL Laws by Oxford University Press, and features scholarly articles that offer a critical analysis of important current legal issues. It covers all areas of legal scholarship and features a wide range of methodological approaches to law. With its emphasis on contemporary developments, CLP is a major point of reference for legal scholarship.

Find out more about CLP on the Oxford University Press website