Category: Uncategorized
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This blog post was originally published by the UK Constitutional Law Association on 28 November 2024. Here is a non-technical summary of the key points. Debate on Bailiff’s Role: Jersey’s States Assembly (parliament) is debating, for the fourth time in 11 years, whether the Bailiff should be replaced as its presiding officer by someone chosen…
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As everybody reading this blog will know, Wikipedia is an online, multilingual, free encyclopaedia compiled using Wiki software. What may be less widely known is the process by which articles on Wikipedia are developed. Anybody with access to the Internet and some basic computer skills can create new articles and edit existing ones. Expert knowledge…
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There aren’t many good jokes about constitutions. In fact, I’m not sure there are any jokes about constitutions. Be that as it may, British comedian Jimmy Carr has sparked a debate about the constitutional future of a small British island off the coast of France. Carr isn’t my cup of tea. I sat next to…
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Along with moaning about the weather, queuing is generally regarded as part and parcel of life in Britain. Next month’s Olympics look set to provide ample opportunities for both in London. At least there are now fewer bendy buses: my experience of the No 25 was that their multiple exists/entrances caused a breakdown of social conventions…
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In my administrative law lectures, I get students to practise an action that I explain ought to become instinctive in the minds of lawyers working for (or against) government. You extend your index finger and, in a sweeping movement, point to a law in the book in front of you, or on the library shelf,…
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I’m reading David Aaronovitch’s Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History (2009). It’s excellent, but although it makes passing reference to conspiracy theories about the European Union it says nothing about one that deals with the foundations of the British constitutional system. Sunstein and Vermeule have defined a conspiracy theory as ‘an effort…
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Lawyers and legal academics from outside the Channel Islands tend to know only three things about the legal systems of Jersey and Guernsey. One is that islands have deployed their constitutional status as Crown Dependencies to develop into major offshore finance centres. Another is that they have a continuing connection with the pre-revolutionary customary laws…
Andrew Le Sueur, FRSA 