UK: Academic warns Constitutional Court is being created without democratic oversight
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The High Court bench that heard the Miller case against prorogation was essentially a constitutional court, formed without any democratic debate, an academic has said.
In a letter to The Times, Professor David Campbell, of Lancaster University Law School, said of the court: “However it is styled, this was not a bench of the High Court.”
The court comprised the Lord Chief Justice, the Master of the Rolls and the President of the Queen’s Bench Division.
Professor Campbell said: “It was as distinguished a Court of Appeal as it is possible to conceive. This was one of the startling, de novo procedural arrangements by which the senior judiciary is creating a constitutional court.”
“There is only one previous example in English legal history of anything like it: Gina Miller’s previous case,” he added.
Creating such a court “without any democratic debate” will result in “untold difficulties”, among these “the outright paradoxical confusion of the hierarchy of the UK courts could lead to immense political stress”, Professor Campbell warned.
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