All roads lead to the Supreme Court today as the Theresa May
led UK government goes to appeal the High Court judgment in favour of
parliamentary debate before the triggering of Article 50.
Senior figures required in the precarious case including
Attorney General Jeremy Wright QC and specialist Gina Miller - who brought the
body of evidence against the Government - arrived before the actual arranged
time at the focal London court for the hearing.
Mr Wright will contend that Theresa May can trigger Article
50 utilizing supposed prerogative powers - meaning MPs don't need to vote on
the matter in Parliament.
The Government is engaging against a prior choice by the
High Court which decided for Ms Miller and other people who need to see
Parliament choose.
Ms Miller told Sky News that the court fight "is about
two very fundamental constitutional questions”.
"One is that Parliament is sovereign and you cannot
bypass it.
"Second, the Government can't use prerogative powers to
strip people of rights and we will lose rights if we leave the EU."
Ms Miller stated that since the High Court judgment she has
endured dangers and various forms of intimidation.
She also said that: "There have been, as you would
expect, a lot of trolls and keyboard warriors.
"But it has moved beyond that to sexual and racial
threats and death threats that have come via emails, phone calls and letters to
my office.
"My staff have been bombarded, my family threatened,
there is even a bounty on my head via social media."
It is an indication of the quality of looking about the
issue that the High Court judges who gave triumph to Ms Miller have themselves
gone under assault.
Many will now be looking to the Supreme Court to topple that
choice and such is the noteworthiness of the case that interestingly the
majority of the court's eleven judges will sit together to consider the
Government's allure.
Professor Vernon Bogdanor told Sky News: "The legal
strength of the Government's position is that treaty matters are for the
executive (the government) and therefore they are an exercise of prerogative
power and that, I think it is agreed, would be true of every treaty.
"But the case on the other side is that the treaty
concerned with the European Union is not just an ordinary treaty because it has
been incorporated into British law."
He further included: "If the arguments were cut and
dried they would have been settled at a much lower level.
"The fact that they are going to the Supreme Court
shows that there are strong arguments on each of the debate."
The stress for the Government is that if Parliament gets the
opportunity to vote it could meddle with the timetable for activating Article
50 or, in a far-fetched situation, ruin it.
The case was optimized to the Supreme Court to maintain a
strategic distance from any allegation that the judicial organ was holding up
the political procedure, however a previous attorney general feelings of dread that
there might be a reaction against the court paying little heed to which come
about develops.
Also speaking was Dominic Grieve QC who told Sky News:
"The judiciary are there to uphold our constitution.
"We don't have a written constitution in this country
but we do have perfectly clear principles and they have to be interpreted by
our judges."
He added: "When the judges go about this work, whether
it is the decision in the High Court or the decision that will come out of the
Supreme Court, they are doing exactly what we require them to do.
"Whilst you can certainly disagree with the decision
they might come up with…to attack them for doing their job is quite
wrong".
No comments:
Write comments