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posted by on Wednesday January 25 2017, @05:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the we've-always-been-at-war-with-eurasia dept.

The UK Supreme Court has ruled that Parliament must vote on and approve of invoking Article 50 which triggers arrangements for leaving the European Union:

The Supreme Court has dismissed the government's appeal in a landmark case about Brexit, meaning Parliament will be required to give its approval before official talks on leaving the EU can begin. The ruling is a significant, although not totally unexpected, setback for Theresa May.

[...] The highest court in England and Wales has dismissed the government's argument that it has the power to begin official Brexit negotiations with the rest of the EU without Parliament's prior agreement. By a margin of eight to three, the 11 justices upheld November's High Court ruling which stated that it would be unlawful for the government to rely on executive powers known as the royal prerogative to implement the outcome of last year's referendum.

Also at NYT, WSJ, and The Guardian.

Previously: Brexit Court Defeat for UK Government


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  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday January 25 2017, @07:38PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Wednesday January 25 2017, @07:38PM (#458613) Journal

    The referendum is a very, very new invention in British politics, and is only used by parliament to ask the advice of the public.

    That was the traditional role of plebiscites in most representative democracies. Even in U.S. states where they can sometimes be initiated by the people (rather than the legislature), in many states there needs to be legislative approval before or after the popular vote.

    Since then, the referendum has been used as a blunt mechanism to get the public to settle issues so that politicians don't have to

    Yes, historically in many countries, there have been two primary uses for popular referenda: (1) to settle matters that politicians don't want to for popularity reasons, and (2) to confirm things that are already basically known to be true (the latter is more common in dictatorships and fascist regimes). While the use for actual legislation initiated [wikipedia.org] by a people's petition has grown in a minority of U.S. states, such initiatives are quite uncommon in the rest of the world... and in almost all cases where they do exist, they require approval from the country's legislature to be enacted.

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  • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday January 25 2017, @08:43PM

    by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 25 2017, @08:43PM (#458641)

    Thank you for the overview. I suppose that's where the idea came from when Britain held it's first referendum in the 70s.

    The only inherently referendum-based political system I'm familiar with is Ireland's, where changes to the country's constitution can only be made by public referendum.