THE UK SUPREME COURT AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PARLIAMENT
THE UK SUPREME COURT: WHAT IS ITS ROLE, AND WHAT IS ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE UK PARLIAMENT?
Image credit: Kevin Leighton, UK Supreme Court.
Introduction In 2005, the UK Parliament created the UK Supreme Court by passing the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. Until then, the highest court in the UK was not a court at all, but a Parliamentary Committee: the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords.1 Its proceedings were theoretically open to the public, but in practice very few members of the public penetrated to Committee Room 1, where the appeals were heard. In addition to hearing and deciding cases, the Law Lords (as the members of the Appellate Committee were known) were able to debate and vote on legislation. The Law Lords also comprised the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which is the highest court of appeal for many Commonwealth countries, as well as the UK’s Overseas Territories, Crown Dependencies and Sovereign Military Base areas. The Privy Council, as I shall call it for short, sat at that time in a court room at 9 Downing Street, subsequently converted into the government’s press briefing room. The role of the judicial House of Lords was not well understood by the public. Justice was done, but it was not very effectively seen to be done. Having Parliamentarians simultaneously acting as judges and law makers was increasingly felt to be in conflict with the idea that the Judiciary should be visibly independent of the Executive and the Legislature. When the replacement of the Law Lords by a Supreme Court of the United Kingdom was proposed by the government in 2003, its consultation paper said: “[The changes will] put the relationship between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary on a modern footing, which takes account of people’s expectations about the independence and transparency of the judicial system.”
The UK Government also explained that the court would be fundamentally different from the Supreme Court of the United States. Lord Falconer, then the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and Lord Chancellor, said in a parliamentary debate: “The [UK Supreme Court], which will sit separately from the legislature, will not be a supreme court of appeal such as the one in the United States of America, which has the power to strike down legislation because there is a written constitution that is superior to it. We are not going down that route. We are allowing a system to be developed where the way in which the courts operate and the way in which the legislature operates will be much clearer to the public.” Through the Constitutional Reform Act, the UK Parliament ensured that the highest court in the UK was independent, and was seen to be independent, of the other branches of government. All those who appeared before the court, and the wider public, could be confident that cases were decided fairly and free from external influence. So the members of the Appellate Committee became judges of the UK Supreme Court,2 and moved across Parliament Square into the former Middlesex Guildhall. That building had housed courts for many years, but was refurbished so as to provide three court rooms, a law library, offices for the judges and staff, and a reception area, café, shop and exhibition centre for members of the public. It opened to the public on 1st October 2009. Twelve years on It is now 12 years since the provisions establishing the court were brought into force, and the court opened for business. How has it developed?
Rt Hon. The Lord Reed of Allermuir is the President of the UK Supreme
Court since 13 January 2020. Upon this appointment, Lord Reed became a life peer. Prior to this, he was a Deputy President of the UK Supreme Court and was originally appointed as a Justice on 6 February 2012. He served as a senior judge in Scotland for 13 years and he practised at the Scottish Bar in a wide range of civil cases, and also prosecuted serious crime. He is also the Visitor of Balliol College, Oxford.
272 | The Parliamentarian | 2021: Issue Three | 100 years of publishing
