UK Constitutional Law Association
There has been a lot of speculation as to the meaning of the ‘constitutional requirements’ to trigger Article 50. Nature abhors a vacuum and sometimes, it seems, so do constitutions. This vacuum arises because, unlike other legislation providing for a referendum, the European Union Referendum Act 2015 makes no mention of any legal obligation triggered by the referendum result. Most, if not all, British constitutional lawyers would accept the proposition that referenda do not generate legally binding obligations upon government to implement their results, and the lack of provisions in the 2015 Act contrasts starkly with the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and the Parliamentary Voting and Constituencies Act 2011. Given the relative silence of the European Union Referendum Act 2015, one can only infer that the result of the referendum is advisory only, and does not trigger Article 50 in and of itself. If any legal obligations follow from…
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