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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
(Score: 2, Redundant) by VLM on Wednesday January 25 2017, @08:28PM
laws ultimately will be litigated in the courts
I see nothing to disagree with in your post; to the best of my understanding there are three "services" provided by the legislators essentially notarizing the vote.
First they're claiming its legit and not fake news or fake results or open for congressional hearings. I suppose it could happen theoretically. So the official position is the vote happened and it was legit and this was the result. So you can stop debating if Russian hackers mean we need to do the opposite of the vote or if the legislators will have hearings or who knows. Its done. Signing a death certificate never killed anyone but it did formally document the event.
The second is they timestamp it. So if a pirate said you provide monthly tribute payment on the first of every month then the exact date of the signoff is the official legal date. I suppose in 50K pages of legislation there is corruption or something such that the exact date of leaving interacts with some other weird legal obligation or payoff or purchased regulation here or there. The date of the election is when the election happened not when the results are applied. The date "they" called the election is the date "they" thought would be fun to declare it. But the date the legislature approves is the official burned in stone date it takes over. Just like the prez doesn't take over on election day or when the election is "called" but exactly and precisely on inauguration day. Also this is relevant to sequence problems did this law get approved after or before brexit legally happened. Any bill that for some reason needed consideration before brexit is declared is either dead or theoretically got moved up to before it was declared. Sequence is sometimes important in the big picture, is something passed tomorrow officially grandfathered in as an exemption or merely illegal? Gotta pick an official date.
The third is we'd like to think legislatures have been housetrained and will not foul the carpet (although we know they are actually savages). Anyway in theory if for the sake of argument we the people voted to eliminate the CIA, then we'd like to think that the legislators would do a professional cleanup job. So more than just zero out the budget and legislation directly applying to the CIA but also clean up indirect messes such as perhaps FCC frequency allocations for spy radios or interdepartmental authorization for cross training sharing 007 gun ranges, roll up the retirement plan, sell surplus property, a full deep cleaning. This is almost "cheaty simple" because the CIA is one isolated department. What if the vote were something across all levels of government like banning of microsoft products or mandatory Android phones for all govt employees or banning pink dress shirts or ties in the office? It sounds so simple to say "in the entire government" but to implement it might take zillions of pages of laws all in different areas and theoretically the legislators are responsible enough and house trained enough to not foul their (our) beds.