18 June 2026
The Judiciary Exits the Scene
The Court of Appeal has reversed the High Court's ruling that the proscription of Palestine Action was unlawful. A special five-judge panel found the ban proportionate, affording the Home Secretary wide latitude on national security grounds. The result of the ruling, and its lop-sided account of the separation of powers, is to remove meaningful legal constraint on the Home Secretary’s capacity to proscribe a group for operational effectiveness reasons, even if that group only has minimal engagement with activities that satisfy the definition of terrorism, as well as with respect to invasive national security powers more broadly. Continue reading >>
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26 March 2026
Hollowing Out Human Rights
In less than two months, the Council of Europe is set to consider the adoption of a Political Declaration intended at “rebalancing” the European Convention on Human Rights in immigration contexts. These developments have implications for the connected rights commitments made under the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement of 1998. If the 1998 Agreement’s rights commitments start from, and extend beyond, the ECHR rights, this cannot be reconciled with efforts to water down those rights and shackle the interpretive role of the Strasbourg Court. Continue reading >>
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05 April 2023
Imposing Brexit onto Northern Ireland’s Post-Conflict Governance Order
The Westphalian state provides for an all-but ubiquitous building block of governance. It stacks neatly into dominant accounts of multi-level governance, with all states being presented as nominal equals on the plain of international law. Where reasons of scale or the needs of diverse societies require, sub-state levels of governance can be introduced into the equation. Multiple states, moreover, can pool aspects of their law and decision making where they see the advantages of so doing, resulting in regional supra-national bodies such as the EU. Continue reading >>
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