In a recent article for his blog A Lawyer Writes, Joshua Rozenberg discusses revelations and essays from the tenth volume of The UK Supreme Court Yearbook, published by Appellate Press and now available from Wildy & Co.
Primarily, the article is framed around Lady Hale’s admission, that she regrets having worn a spider brooch when she ruled, in the case in the case known as Miller 2, that Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament for five weeks was unlawful. She made the admission in a lecture given on 12 December 2019, which is included in the forward to the yearbook.
She said:
I do regret the focus on the brooch which I was wearing when delivering the summary in Miller v The Prime Minister. Regular viewers know that I often wear a brooch — usually a creature — to liven up our normally quite sober dress, but that it has no obvious connection to the matter in hand.
Unlike Madeleine Albright, I am not trying to send a message. There was no hidden message in the brooch I wore that day, but perhaps I should have foreseen that the public and the media would look for one.
In his blog, Rozenberg discussed letting cameras into the courtroom, Lord Pannick QC’s essays on Miller 2, amd whether Miller 2 created new law.
Rozenberg writes:
In week before the Supreme Court celebrated its tenth anniversary — the last week of the legal year 2018/19 — the justices delivered what’s likely to remain their most important judgment for many years to come.
I discussed Miller 2 in my own book Enemies of the People?, published in April last year. But the UK Supreme Court Yearbook for 2018/19 provides students and others with a great deal more inside information and high-level analysis. I’ve hardly scratched the book’s surface in this piece — but perhaps I shall be able to mine some more nuggets in the weeks to come.
You can read the full blog here.