humanities.philosophy.objectivism

Can I just start by saying how grateful I am for this
lesson in UK constitutional law. First you showed
me the light in international law, and now this... it's
almost too much.

On 5 Apr, 12:57, Charles Bell wrote:
> On Apr 4, 2:34 am, Reggie Perrin wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On 3 Apr, 22:33, Charles Bell wrote:
>
> > > On Apr 3, 2:07 pm, Reggie Perrin wrote:
>
> > > > On 3 Apr, 13:30, Charles Bell wrote:
>
> > > > > I am in favor of a sort of English Law Lords (placed in the Senate, no
> > > > > longer directly elected, as originally intended) method of judicial
> > > > > last resort.  Stupidly, and, I might add, at the direction of
> > > > > leftists, the British Parliment is doing away with the Law Lords and
> > > > > giving themselves a Supreme Court.
>
> > > > Yeah, fused powers -- *that's* the way to secure liberty!
>
> > > The problem in Britain is that its Executive is divided between a Head
> > > of State who is merely a tourist attraction and a Head of Government
> > > who is merely a political party functionary, and all real power is
> > > entirely in the legislature.  To compound the problem by devolving
> > > power to another political branch, but which is not beholden to the
> > > people (IOW, cronyism), is not going to help.
>
> > Wrong way round, actually. The problem is that too much
> > power is concentrated in the executive.
>
> The "executive" Prime Minister can be dismissed in a matter of minutes
> by his own party or the House of Commons at large.

The executive is the government as a whole, not
just the Prime Minister. During the whole of the twentieth
century, only three governments have ever been forced to
resign on a vote of no confidence. It has been such a rare
occurence that the existence of a constitutional convention
obtaining in such circumstances has been doubted.
Blair's defeat on an anti-terrorism bill in 2005 was the
first time a government had been defeated on a final
reading for ten years. I realise that the phrase "too much
executive power" is oxymoronic for you, but for the rest
of us, the UK system exemplifies it.

> The House of Lords can now be entirely constituted by
> the House of Commons

Nonsense. 92 seats in the Lords are still
occupied by hereditary peers and the remainder
were appointed by the current or previous Prime
Ministers. The Commons has nothing to do with it.

>, and the new
> Supreme Court may be entirely constituted by the House of
> Commons by a circuitous route only thinly veiling the origins. The appointment to
> the new Supreme Court by the Monarch as Head of State is a farce as
> the Queen is a rubber stamp for the Prime Minister [or technically the
> Judicial Appointments Commission]

There is no "technically" about it -- the
appointments will be made by the JAC, which
is an independent body.

> At a national
> level, there will be effectively no separation of powers in Britain.

NEWSFLASH: there has never been an
effective separation of powers in Britain.

"The efficient secret of the English Constitution
may be described as the close union, the nearly
complete fusion, of the executive and legislative
powers. No doubt by the traditional theory, as it
exists in all the books, the goodness of our
constitution consists in the entire separation of the
legislative and executive authorities, but in truth its
merit consists in their singular approximation."
-- Walter Bagehot, _The_English_Constitution_,
1867

What we *have* enjoyed over recent years is
an increasing de facto separation of the judiciary
from the other branches. By convention the
Lord Chancellor no longer sits on cases
involving the government, and Law Lords
cannot sit on appeals involving laws that
they have commented on in debates. The
appointment of the Law Lords, though
nominally an executive power, has long been
an arms-length process.

It is this separation that the creation of
the Supreme Court seeks to formalise
and secure, and for that reason it
is welcomed by those of us who recognise
the importance of the doctrine of the separation
of powers.