In the wake of Miller (No 2), it has been contended in the media that prorogation ‘has always been treated as a “proceeding in Parliament”’ and hence protected from judicial review by article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1688. The allegation is that in Miller (No 2), the Supreme Court overturned over 300 years of jurisprudence, including its own 2014 decision that ‘the Crown’s actions in Parliament were sacrosanct and “cannot be questioned”’. Political motivations have been attributed to the Court for this abrupt departure from its own jurisprudence.
Is this actually the case? A dispassionate analysis shows that the Court has taken an approach consistent with its previous jurisprudence on article 9 of the Bill of Rights and has not altered its course for political or any other reasons. This post surveys some of the relevant evidence.
The purpose of article 9
Article 9 of the Bill…
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The day Martin Luther King stood by the Lincoln Memorial and spoke of his dream, also saw some of the great luminaries of the folk music scene of the day. Among those performing were someone most people have probably heard of: Bob Dylan. I suspect very few have heard of Josh White. But, White’s story, and the story of America’s folk revival, gives us a slice of American social, political and cultural history. It takes us from the dust bowl to New York City, from the White House to the HUAC.
Interest in the traditional music of Europe and America was hardly new. In the later part of the 19th century, James Francis Child was a Harvard academic: he wrote one of the most important studies of Chaucer, for example. What he is perhaps best remembered for is his collection of 305 traditional English and Scottish folk songs, colloquially…
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