The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom opens officially today – and with it, a new chapter in this country’s legal history. The Guardian has a leader about it today, and the opening is likely to be covered widely […]

Gordon Brown’s conference speech yesterday gripped the nation, obviously – if you want to know what I thought of it politically, have a look at my other blog. A couple of constitutional and legal points emerged from it too, […]

Lord Lester, writing in the Guardian today, explains why he resigned as the government’s independent adviser on constitutional change. I have some sympathy for Lord Lester – he had the experience (that many civil servants have had) of finding […]

I seriously dislike the word governance. Okay, it has some reasonable uses: in the phrase corporate governance, for instance, in which it has a useful sense of oversight from on high. Otherwise, it’s unbearably pompous. I […]

Chris Hawes at The Wardman Wire has written an excellent piece today on constitutional reform arguing against some of the fads of the moment, like proportional representation and fixed-term parliaments. I’ve already written about fixed terms; and I […]

One of the strangest aspects of the MP’s expenses scandal has been the way politicians have tried to move public discussion on to questions of sweeping constitutional reform. It seems to me it was the greed of MPs themselves – […]

Lord Lester also spoke in Tuesday’s debate, and although he didn’t give a full explanation of why he resigned from his role as a government adviser recently, he did give some clues. He obviously hoped for a much […]

On the day after Barack Obama’s election, I thought you might be interested in what Walter Bagehot said about the presidential form of government, in his famous 19th century work, The English Constitution:

the […]

Simon Carr of the Independent seems to share my feelings about the government’s constitutional reform plans.

Speaker Martin is making matters worse by applying the sub judice rule to his own appeal against the Information Tribunal’s ruling. The one place, therefore, that there can be no discussion of this incredible appeal is in […]