BREXIT will make it easier to administer justice in the UK because it will no longer be necessary for the country’s highest court to ask Europe to clarify how the law should be interpreted, a Supreme Court justice has claimed.
Lord Reed, who is one of two Scottish judges on the Supreme Court’s 12-strong bench and one of three to dissent in the recent high-profile Brexit case, said that while it is currently “vital” for the court to be able to refer cases to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Luxembourg, “it will be different after withdrawal”.
“This court looks at the cases raising EU points and we can refer them to Luxembourg if we choose to. We’re under a duty to do that if we feel a point isn’t clear and it’s necessary for us to have clarification,” Lord Reed said.
“The function of Luxembourg is to ensure there’s a consistency of EU law throughout the 28 jurisdictions. Our duty to refer is to enable that to take place. It’s vital for us to have that so long as we’re in the EU. It will be different after withdrawal.
“The White Paper on the Great Repeal Bill sets the date of withdrawal as the date when EU law will generally cease to apply. It would feel that in general there would be no value in making CJEU references afterwards.”
While the Government has indicated that it will convert all existing EU law into UK law for a transitional period following Brexit, Lord Reed noted that “our laws in future will be made by Parliament”.
“They will be made by legislators who have been elected in the UK. Constitutionally it’s a very different situation,” he said.
“It means that the laws have been made according to what the Government thinks will be in the best interests of the UK.
“If anything a judge’s job may become somewhat simpler. EU law inevitably pervades a great many areas of the law and it requires different skills from judging domestic legislation. It adds to the difficulty of our job.”
Lord Reed made his comments ahead of the Supreme Court’s June visit to Edinburgh, when he, Supreme Court president Lord Neuberger, fellow Scottish justice Lord Hodge and the court’s only female member, Lady Hale, will preside over three cases that were originally heard in Scotland’s appeal court, the Inner House of the Court of Session.
While he said the question of how cases would be appealed should Scotland ever become an independent country was “too political a question for me to comment on”, Lord Reed did note that it is “important to have layers of appeal”.
Currently the Supreme Court serves as the court of final appeal for all parts of the UK, but it would cease to have jurisdiction over Scotland in the event of independence.
At the time of the last independence referendum the SNP said the Inner House of the Court of Session would become Scotland’s Supreme Court, but it was unclear how this would work in practice or whether parties would still be able to seek to appeal an appeal decision, as is currently the case.
“The current system does enable most of the cases to receive a greater level of attention than they might otherwise receive,” Lord Reed said.
He added that due to the Supreme Court receiving a far smaller number of cases than the Inner House each year it is able to “look at these cases with much more care and trouble”.
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