Author
Catherine Barnard
Published
November 2019
About this Report
This is a policy brief titled, Brexit and the [rule of] law.
Brexit has posed a challenge to the law, both at domestic level and at EU level. Catherine Barnard wishes to argue
that the law is being used to shape the politics, to constrain the politics and ultimately to respond to the politics, and that we shall be ruled by law. It places a considerable responsibility on the judges for upholding the rule of law and shaping that law.
The author argues that all of this comes with risks and she questions why lawyers should get control of what politicians – elected by the people, get to do? She asserts that one of the reasons why people voted leave was to get out of rigid, hierarchical rules-based structures imposed from above by those they perceived as unaccountable.