eurealist.co.uk

Neil Herron: EU Constitution and the Metric Martyrs Judgment:

“To make sure that everyone understands what is being talked about, an explanatory note was added to the final version of the constitution duringthe closing stages of the negotiations.
It states: ‘The conference notes that the provisions of Article I-6 reflect existing Court of Justice case law.’
So there you have it: the European Courts think that EU law is superior to national constitutional law, a position explicitly rejected by the High Court in London; the reference to ‘existing Court of Justice case law’ therefore means that the British Government is asserting its support for the ECJ’s position and repudiating that of the British courts.

This is an astonishing, perhaps unprecedented, situation.

Either the Government is incompetent in claiming that the constitution is no big deal (and, since incompetence is becoming the hallmark of the Blair government, this explanation cannot be ruled out of hand); or it is deliberately hiding the revolutionary significance of the EU declaration in a desperate attempt to downplay the dramatic implications of theconstitution. Apart from anything else, the British government has set itself on a collision course with the courts, of a kind which will make the battles over the enforcement of criminal justice in recent years look like a Sunday tea-party at a rural vicarage.

To repeat: the British Government, by signing the constitution, wishes to endorse ‘ECJ case law’, which asserts that EU law is supreme even over British constitutional law and can determine the nature of the relationship between the UK and EU, explicitly going against the position of the British courts as stated by Lord Justice Laws in the ‘Metric Martyrs’ case.

The ECJ would regard the ratification of the constitution by Parliament as a deliberate renunciation of Lord Justice Laws’ judgment - and hence a British desire to renounce his ruling; this would create an enormous constitutional crisis over the central question of who has ultimate legal authority in theUK - and signal a massive power struggle.Given Lord Justice Laws’ view that the British Parliament does not have theright to abandon its own sovereignty, would the British courts refuse togive effect to the Constitution?

Or would they regard a “Yes” vote in the referendum as explicit public support for terminating the common law principle of parliamentary sovereignty - the foundation of the British constitution for centuries - and hence accept what would in effect be a revolution, in the strictest meaning of that word?”

Full Post: