ABSTRACT
As we have seen in Chapter 4, Parliament is sovereign in the British constitution and this formally remains the case despite Britain’s membership of the European Union, devolution to Scotland, Wales and London and its various treaty obligations. Unlike the US Supreme Court, the British courts have no power to declare Acts of Parliament ‘unconstitutional’. British judges have, furthermore, traditionally deferred to the executive on a whole range of issues, not least those relating to national security (see Chapter 21). Britain has also hitherto had a ‘political’ constitution in which many important decisions were governed by conventions that were ‘policed’ by politicians rather than the courts (see Chapter 4). Thus, while Justices of the Supreme Court in the United States have become major political figures, British judges have – with a few notable exceptions – remained above the political fray. Few politicians felt it necessary to address the judiciary or to factor their reactions into their calculations, let alone warn of the dangers of ‘judicial supremacism’.
