Articles tagged as Public Law
Latest Law Papers tagged as Public Law
Including law essays, dissertations, problem questions, case summaries, and law lectures, suitable for law students working towards their LLB / LLM qualifications or those studying for the new SQE.
References on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and European Charter of Local Self-Government (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bills [2021] UKSC 42
Case Summaries
The Scottish Parliament passed two Bills to give domestic effect to international commitments concerning children’s rights and local self-government. Before Royal Assent, the UK law officers referred particular clauses to the Supreme Court. The issue was whether the Scottish Parliament could give those clauses their proposed effect on UK legislation. The references On 16 March […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
R (on the application of Palestine Solidarity Campaign Ltd and another) v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government [2020] UKSC 16
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court held, by a majority, that the Secretary of State acted unlawfully when he told administrators of the local government pension scheme not to pursue investment policies contrary to UK foreign or defence policy. He could guide how they take non-financial considerations into account. He could not use that power to stop investment […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
A Reference by the Attorney General for Northern Ireland of devolution issues to the Supreme Court pursuant to Paragraph 34 of Schedule 10 to the Northern Ireland Act 1998 (Northern Ireland) [2020] UKSC 2
Case Summaries
The Department for Communities published postcode lists used to introduce universal credit in Northern Ireland. Could those lists provide the basis for referring a human rights challenge to the Supreme Court? The justices declined to accept the Attorney General’s reference. The constitutional question was whether the Department’s part in implementing the policy brought it within […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
R v Adams (Northern Ireland) [2020] UKSC 19
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court held that an interim custody order made for the appellant in 1973 was invalid because the Secretary of State had not personally decided that he was suspected of involvement in terrorism. A Minister of State could sign such an order, but could not make it. The appellant had therefore not been in […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Elgizouli v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] UKSC 10
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court held that the Home Secretary acted unlawfully by agreeing to share investigative material with the United States for the prosecution of Shafee El Sheikh without considering the Data Protection Act 2018. Much of the material was personal data, and the Act required a specific decision that the conditions for transferring it were […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
R (on the application of Friends of the Earth Ltd and others) v Heathrow Airport Ltd [2020] UKSC 52
Case Summaries
This appeal concerned the 2018 designation of the Airports National Policy Statement, which supported a third runway at Heathrow. The Supreme Court examined the climate policies and evidence the Secretary of State had to consider at that stage. A separate development consent process would be needed before a runway could be built. The appeal concerned […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
R (on the application of Maughan) v Her Majesty’s Senior Coroner for Oxfordshire [2020] UKSC 46
Case Summaries
An inquest jury could not use the short-form conclusion of suicide under the direction it received, yet its narrative findings said the deceased had probably intended to take his own life. His brother’s challenge required the Court to decide which standard of proof governed an inquest conclusion. James Maughan died in prison. The coroner directed […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Reference by the Attorney General for Northern Ireland of devolution issues to the Supreme Court pursuant to Paragraph 34 of Schedule 10 to the Northern Ireland Act 1998 (No 2) (Northern Ireland) [2019] UKSC 1
Case Summaries
The Attorney General for Northern Ireland asked the Supreme Court to answer five questions about whether Northern Ireland departments could take decisions while ministers and the Executive were not in office. The Court did not answer them. It adjourned the reference so that the issues could, if appropriate, be argued against the facts of existing […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
In the matter of an application by Geraldine Finucane for Judicial Review (Northern Ireland) [2019] UKSC 7
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court held that government statements had created a legitimate expectation of a public inquiry into the 1989 murder of Patrick Finucane, but that the government could lawfully depart from the promise on genuine macro-political policy grounds. The investigations that had taken place, including Sir Desmond de Silva’s review, did not satisfy the procedural […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
R (on the application of Privacy International) v Investigatory Powers Tribunal and others [2019] UKSC 22
Case Summaries
Privacy International asked the High Court to review an Investigatory Powers Tribunal decision that what were called thematic warrants could authorise computer hacking by GCHQ. Section 67(8) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 said that the Tribunal’s decisions, including decisions as to its own jurisdiction, were not to be questioned in any court. […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
R (on the application of DA and others) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2019] UKSC 21
Case Summaries
Two groups of lone parents and children challenged the revised household benefit cap introduced in 2016. They argued that lone parents with very young children faced special barriers to working enough hours to qualify for an exemption. The Supreme Court dismissed both appeals by five votes to two. The revised cap The original benefit cap, […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
R (on the application of Newby Foods Ltd) v Food Standards Agency [2019] UKSC 18
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court held that residual pork and chicken meat recovered by Newby Foods Ltd through a mechanical shearing process must be classified as mechanically separated meat under EU food-hygiene rules. That classification prevents the product from counting towards meat content and subjects it to the labelling and production restrictions in the Food Standards Agency’s […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Samuels v Birmingham City Council [2019] UKSC 28
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court quashed Birmingham City Council’s decision that Ms Samuels was intentionally homeless after she lost her tenancy through rent arrears. Affordability had to be judged by an objective assessment of her reasonable living expenses, including those of her children, rather than by asking whether she had enough flexibility in her budget to meet […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions v Gubeladze [2019] UKSC 31
Case Summaries
Ms Tamara Gubeladze, a Latvian national, was refused state pension credit because some of her work in the United Kingdom had not been registered under the Worker Registration Scheme. The Supreme Court held that extending that scheme in 2009 was a disproportionate, and therefore unlawful, limit on rights arising from the 2004 enlargement of the […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions v MM (Scotland) [2019] UKSC 34
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court considered the meaning of “social support” when assessing, for personal independence payment, whether a claimant’s ability to engage with other people face to face is limited. It held that support, which may include prompting, counts only where the claimant needs it from someone trained or experienced in assisting social engagement, and that […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
R (on the application of the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers and another) v Food Standards Agency (reference to the Court of Justice) [2019] UKSC 36
Case Summaries
After an Official Veterinarian withheld a health mark from a slaughtered bull because pyaemia was suspected, the operator argued that the Food Standards Agency had to take the carcass before a Justice of the Peace under section 9 of the Food Safety Act 1990. The Supreme Court did not decide whether that procedure is available […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
RR v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2019] UKSC 52
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court held that local authorities and tribunals must not apply the housing benefit bedroom tax deduction where doing so would breach a claimant's rights under the Human Rights Act 1998, including for periods before Parliament amended the regulations. RR and his severely disabled partner needed separate bedrooms, but the unamended rules allowed the […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
R (Bancoult No 3) v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs [2018] UKSC 3
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court dismissed a challenge to the 2010 marine protected area around the Chagos Islands. A leaked United States cable, said to show that officials wanted the reserve to make Chagossian resettlement impracticable, was admissible, but the majority held that it would not have shown an improper purpose in the Foreign Secretary’s own decision, […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
R (Gallaher Group Ltd and others) v Competition and Markets Authority [2018] UKSC 25
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court held that the Office of Fair Trading acted lawfully in repaying a competition penalty to one company which had received a mistaken assurance, while refusing the same repayment to other companies which had not. Equal treatment is not a free-standing principle of domestic administrative law, and the different treatment was a rational […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Belhaj and another v Director of Public Prosecutions and another [2018] UKSC 33
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court held that judicial review of the Director of Public Prosecutions’ decision not to prosecute is “proceedings in a criminal cause or matter” under the Justice and Security Act 2013. Closed material procedure is therefore unavailable. The majority reached that conclusion from the ordinary meaning of the words and their long-standing use in […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
THE UK WITHDRAWAL FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION (LEGAL CONTINUITY) (SCOTLAND) BILL – A Reference by the Attorney General and the Advocate General for Scotland [2018] UKSC 64
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court was asked whether the Scottish Parliament could pass its own Bill to keep law operating in devolved areas after the United Kingdom left the European Union. It held that the Bill as a whole did not enter the reserved field of relations with the EU, and that the Parliament could legislate in […] ...
Last modified: 3rd Nov 2026
R (on the application of Miller and another) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5
Case Summaries
In January 2017 the Supreme Court held that ministers needed an Act of Parliament before they could give notice of the United Kingdom’s intention to leave the EU under article 50. The referendum had produced a political mandate to leave. The legal question was who had authority to take the step that, on the assumptions […] ...
Last modified: 3rd Nov 2026
N v ACCG and others [2017] UKSC 22
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court held that the Court of Protection may decide only between options available to a person lacking capacity and cannot require care providers or funders to supply services they are unwilling to provide. Where a clinical commissioning group and care home refused to facilitate or fund the contact arrangements sought by the parents […] ...
Last modified: 3rd Nov 2026
DB v Chief Constable of Police Service of Northern Ireland [2017] UKSC 7
Case Summaries
In late 2012 and early 2013, weekly loyalist marches passed through Belfast’s Short Strand without notice to the Parades Commission, and the police did not stop them. The Supreme Court held that this rested on a misunderstanding of the law. Organising or taking part in an unnotified parade was a criminal offence, so the police […] ...
Last modified: 3rd Nov 2026
McCann v The State Hospitals Board for Scotland [2017] UKSC 31
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court held that the State Hospital's comprehensive smoking ban was an exercise of management powers, but the linked prohibition on possessing tobacco and the powers to search for and confiscate it had to be exercised under the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003 and had not been. The ban interfered with […] ...
Last modified: 3rd Nov 2026
