A Supreme Court for the United Kingdom: views from the Northern Kingdom

Of the four Consultation Papers produced by the Department for Constitutional Affairs over the summer of 2003, in many ways the most interesting was Constitutional Reform: A Supreme Court for the United Kingdom, not just for what it did say, but also for what it did not. For example, respondents were not asked whether the Government should replace the House of Lords with a Supreme Court or not. That was taken as a given. Yet the omission was all the more curious in the light of the fact, as subsequently became clear, that at least half of the current Law Lords do not favour the introduction of a Supreme Court.