Legislative PMent Supremacy Flashcards
Burmah Oil case 1964
making retrospective legislation and reversing a decision of the courts (War Damages Act 1965)
Vauxhall Estates case 1932
Case concerned the amount of compensation payable to Vauxhall Estates following a compulsory purchase of their
land
Housing Act 1925 provided for less generous
payments than the Acquisition of Land Act 1919, and s 7(1)of the earlier Act stated that provisions in any other legislation dealing with the same subject matter, “shall cease to have or shall not have effect”
Held: Parliament could not be bound by an earlier Act, and to the extent that the 1919 and 1925 Acts were inconsistent, the earlier Act had been impliedly repealed
Godden v Hales 1682
Held that the king could dispense with laws made by Parliament, because ‘the laws of England are the King’s laws’
British Railways Board v Pickin [1974]
‘In earlier times many learned lawyers seem to have believed that an Act of Parliament could be disregarded in so far as it was contrary to the law of God or the law of nature or natural justice, but since the supremacy of
Parliament was finally demonstrated by the Revolution of 1688 any such idea has been obsolete.’ - LJ Reid
Held: Pickin’s challenge was rejected: the House of Lords confirmed that the courts have no authority to question the validity of an Act or inquire into how it was passed
Jackson case 2005
Held: The Hunting Act 2004 was a valid Act of Parliament. There was no legal or constitutional reason why the 1911 Act could not be amended using the procedure set out in that
Act. The 1949 Act was therefore valid.
If the amendments to the 1911 Act were valid, the 2004 Act
was also valid. Laws made using the Parliament Acts were not
delegated legislation: they were primary legislation that had
been enacted using a modified procedure.
R V Secretary of State for Transport ex. Factortame1991
Held: After referring the matter to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling, the House of Lords held that European law must prevail, and any inconsistent provisions in
the 1988 Act were ‘disapplied’
Thoburn v Sunderland CC 2002
Held: The EC Act 1972 had not been impliedly repealed by the Weights and Measures Act 1985, and the defendants’ convictions were upheld.
Constitutional Statutes
Magna Carta 1297;
The Bill of Rights 1689;
The Act of Union 1707;
The Acts which enlarged the franchise (voting rights);
The European Communities Act 1972;
The Human Rights Act 1998;
The Scotland Act 1998 and Government of Wales Act 1998
Retained EU Law Act 2023
Section 1 – provided for a significant amount of retained EU legislation to be revoked at the end of 2023.
Section 3 – amended section 5 of the 2018 Act, to state that,
from the end of 2023, ‘[t]he principle of the supremacy of EU law is not part of domestic law’.
