ABSTRACT
The United Kingdom Supreme Court (UKSC) is both a relatively new institution, established in 2009, and an old institution, inheriting many of the practices of the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. The creation of the Court was accompanied by a debate – which has continued since the Court's creation – about the extent to which the Court acts as a constitutional court rather than (just) an appellate court of final appeal. In this chapter, we review the Court's decisions in public law cases, and in particular those decisions which relate to (a) the power of the executive vis-à-vis the legislature (horizontal checks), (b) the power of devolved parliaments and administrations (vertical checks) and (c) the rights of the citizenry. We discuss the success rate of different types of claims before the court, evaluating trends in the Supreme Court over time and under different presidents of the Court. We also examine divisions between the judges as expressed through their dissenting opinions and ex-cathedra remarks.
