Subjects:

Constitutional and Administrative Law

Contents:

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1. Comparative Lesson Learning and the Court Reform Agenda

PART II: TOP-LEVEL NATIONAL COURTS IN DEVOLVED AND FEDERAL CONTEXTS

2. Scottish Perspectives on Top Court Reform

3. Northern Ireland Perspectives on Top Court Reform

4. Canadian Attempts to Accommodate Regional Difference in Court Design

5. Ideas of 'representation' in United Kingdom Court Structures

6. The Spanish Experience of Division of Powers Adjudication

7. The Canadian Experience of Division of Powers Adjudication

PART III: TOP-LEVEL NATIONAL COURTS IN THE WIDER EUROPE

8. The Bundesverfassungsgericht, the European Court of Justice, and the European Court of Human Rights

9. The Law Lords and the European Courts

PART IV: INTERMEDIATE COURTS OF APPEAL AND TOP-LEVEL NATIONAL COURTS

10. The Court of Appeal in England and Wales and the House of Lords

11. The US Supreme Court and Federal Courts of Appeals

12. Choosing Cases

PART V: JUDGES

13. Judicial Appointments in the Era of Human Rights and Devolution

14. Relationships between Bar and Bench

In the context of the far-reaching reforms proposed for the Appellate Committee House of Lords and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, Building the UK's New Supreme Court considers the operation and reform of courts at the apex of the UK's legal systems. The chapters are linked by broad and overlapping themes. The first of these is the complexity of accommodating national differences within the UK into the institutional design of the new supreme court. It will be not only a court for the UK's three legal systems, and simultaneously a national institution of the whole UK, but it is also likely to be called upon to resolve division of powers disputes within the emerging system of multi-level government. A second theme is the scope for comparative lesson-learning from top courts in other legal systems: the Supreme Court of Canada, the US federal courts system, and the constitutional courts in Germany and Spain are considered. Thirdly, the connections between the UK's top-level court and other courts, especially intermediate courts of appeal, the European Court of Justice, and the European Court of Human Rights are examined.