105 research outputs found

    Introduction : Brexit and Scots law

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    Leaving the European Union will be the most significant systemic change to Scots law since the creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. The essays in this special Analysis section survey some (though by no means all) of the key aspects of the legal system likely to be affected by Brexit. In some of these areas, such as agriculture and fisheries, EU law has been the central source of legal regulation since we joined what was then the EEC in 1973. In other areas, EU law has played a role alongside domestic regulation, in greater or lesser degrees. At the time of writing (October 2017) – some 16 months after the EU referendum and seven months after formal notification of the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU was given under Article 50 TEU – it is surprising just how much uncertainty there still is about the likely effects of Brexit. The articles in this section identify three key sources of uncertainty

    The constitutional implications of the rise of the SNP

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    The UK Constitutional Law Association blog has asked constitutional lawyers to review the main party manifestos ahead of the May elections, drawing out key constitutional proposals. Below Aileen McHarg discussed the constitutional implications of the rise of the SNP

    Constitutional law

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    The impact of EU membership on the UK constitution has been profound. In the Miller (Article 50) case, the Supreme Court described the effect of the European Communities Act 1972 (ECA) – the means by which EU membership was given effect within the UK – as being unprecedented in constitutional terms. Not only did it provide for a new source of law, and a new constitutional process for making law in the UK, it also fundamentally changed the UK’s system of government and the way in which we think about the location and exercise of public power

    Energy

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    The Scottish Government has strong energy policy ambitions, particularly regarding the promotion of low carbon energy, but relatively weak energy policy competence, making it vulnerable to decisions taken at UK level which conflict with its policy objectives. This was illustrated in 2015, when the newly-elected Conservative Government withdrew subsidies from onshore windfarms, cancelled funding for carbon capture and storage demonstration projects, and ended energy efficiency programmes

    Legislative quality and the Scottish Parliament

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    Writing in The Scotsman in July 2016, Alistair Bonnington made the startling claim that the Scottish Parliament produces “the lowest quality legislation in Europe”.1 Such hyperbole is easy to dismiss; given the linguistic challenges, and the varying roles and styles of legislation in different legal systems, how would one even begin to make such a comparative assessment? Nevertheless, complaints about the rigour of Holyrood's legislative process and the quality of its legislative output, usually by comparison with Westminster, have dogged the Parliament since its earliest days, though criticisms are more often based on assertion and anecdote than detailed analysis. This is perhaps unsurprising given that measuring the quality of legislation and the effectiveness of parliamentary scrutiny are more complex tasks than might be thought.2 This note aims to shed some light on the debate by considering the different things we might mean when talking about “good” or “bad” legislation and by identifying what we know – and, more importantly, what we do not know – about Holyrood's performance measured against these criteria

    Brexit and UK energy policy

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    This chapter examines the potential impact of Brexit on UK energy policy. So far, the UK Government has given very limited indication as to how it sees Brexit affecting UK energy policy. However, the key issues are likely to arise in the following areas: market structures, market integration, low carbon energy, other environmental constraints, research and investment funding, and nuclear safety

    Crown Estate devolution

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    One of the Smith Commission's more significant recommendations was that responsibility for managing the Crown Estate in Scotland, and the revenue generated from it, should be transferred to the Scottish Parliament.1 The Crown Estate is currently managed on a UK-wide basis by the Crown Estate Commissioners under the Crown Estate Act 1961 (“CEA”). Its origins date back to 1760, when George III surrendered the revenues from Crown lands to parliament in return for support via the civil list, an arrangement confirmed by each subsequent monarch. Today the Crown Estate consists of a mixture of hereditary Crown property rights, more recent rights vested in the Crown by statute, and modern property acquisitions. It does not comprise the entirety of Crown property rights, nor is it the personal property of the sovereign. It is, in effect, a publicly-owned property business, the revenues from which accrue to the UK Treasury

    Energy law

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    Although two out of the three founding treaties of what is now the European Union (EU) – the 1951 European Coal and Steel Community Treaty (which expired in 2002) and the 1957 European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) Treaty – had energy at their heart, EU energy law was limited in its scope and impact until the 1990s, with early interventions largely focused on (nuclear) safety and maintaining security of supply. In general, with energy security being regarded as closely linked to national security, Member States jealously guarded their sovereignty in relation to energy policy, and energy industries were mostly organised on national lines, often as publicly-owned monopolies. Things began to change in the late 1980s and 1990s as a result of two pressures. First, the desire to complete the EU internal market, by addressing indirect distortions to competition such as energy costs, coincided with a worldwide shift in energy policy away from public ownership and monopolisation towards privatisation and liberalisation. Relying on general competition law and free movement powers, the Commission moved to liberalise downstream gas and electricity markets, initially via a litigation strategy and subsequently through three successive waves of legislation (in 1996/98, 2003, and 2009)
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