The Government placed considerable reliance on the flexibility of the UK constitution in its appeal to the Supreme Court in Miller, urging that this flexibility be employed to take full account of the factual and political context of the Brexit referendum in determining the legal questions before the court. In this post, I suggest that this plea for flexibility in construing the European Communities Act 1972 (‘ECA’) is unsupported by authority – in particular, the House of Lord’s decision in Robinson v Secretary of State for Northern Ireland [2002] UKHL 32, [2002] NI 390 (‘Robinson’), relied upon by the Government – and is indeed contrary to the courts’ proper constitutional role.
The Government’s plea for flexibility
In support of its contention that it retains prerogative power to withdraw from the EU despite the resulting sea-change in domestic law, the Government argues that, as a constitutional statute, the ECA…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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