9 March 2014

Vexatious Litigants

In the name of the Wee Man, surely not another challenge to the legality of the independence referendum? In this morning's Sunday Times, the paper reports that the Scottish Parliament's decision to limit the referendum franchise to those residing in Scotland is illegal under European Union law, and faces "good prospects" of being waylaid in our courts and declared unlawful.  

The story has since been picked up by the Daily Mail and others who characteristically carelessly misrepresent the case as a question of human rights - rather than EU - law.  James Wallace - the tiresome and self-promoting face of expatriate grief about being excluded from the referendum franchise - strikes again.  For those who breathed a sigh of relief after the Edinburgh Agreement was signed, hoping we were beyond such vexatious legal contrivances, this headline and the threat is unlikely to be welcome. 

The legal brain behind these reports is Aidan O'Neill QC.  O'Neill is a talented and creative public lawyer - but his recent track record in the UK courts also casts him as the patron saint of lost causes.  For those who have followed his recent cases, one can only be impressed by O'Neill capacity to scrape together a defensible argument from the scrappiest of material.  He has made extensive - and entirely unsuccessful - use of EU law arguments in his recent outings in our courts, seeking to challenge the bans on prisoner votes at the UK and Scottish level.  Even if Wallace and his aggrieved comrades scraped together the booty necessary to pursue their grievances in court, this is kite flying of the first order and if the UK Supreme Court was even willing to entertain the argument, I'd fully expect them to blast it out of the sky, as it has blasted each and every one of O'Neill's other playful attempts to extend the province of EU law to controversial questions of constitutional and public law. 

In the 2013 UK Supreme Court case of Chester and McGeogh, O'Neill attempted to persuade the seven justices that his (imprisoned) client's right to vote in European and Scottish parliamentary elections was protected not just by the European Convention on Human Rights, but also European Union law. His efforts to do so, while plucky and imaginative, were resoundingly unsuccessful. O'Neill's EU law submissions were unanimously rejected by the court.  

Not to be dissuaded, O'Neill re-deployed his expertise before Lord Glennie in the Outer House of the Court of Session in Moohan last December, contending that EU law prevented Holyrood from excluding another three prisoners from the referendum franchise. O'Neill argued that the referendum might deprive his three clients of their EU citizenship rights, and as a consequence, EU law was engaged and required their inclusion in September's plebiscite.  But like the Supreme Court, Lord Glennie wasn't willing to play. It remains to be seen if his argument will prosper better in the Inner House on appeal, but I rather doubt it.

Today's Sunday Times report seems to rely on the same logic O'Neill appealed to in Moohan. If three prisoners had a right to challenge the legality of the referendum on the grounds that they might lose their EU citizenship rights if there is a Yes vote, the same case could be made about the many more Scottish-born folk, who no longer live in Scottish constituencies, who won't be able to vote on the 18th of September. So what did the court make of O'Neill's submissions under this heading the last time they were tested? 

Short version: it didn't fly. EU law submissions having been vigorously spiked by Lord Mance and his colleagues in the UK Supreme Court, O'Neill was forced into something of a rearguard action, premised on the (controversial) question of Scotland's EU status after a Yes vote in the referendum. Lord Glennie concluded that:

"Even if I had found that EU law was engaged, on the basis that the independence referendum was a referendum directly affecting the question of EU membership and EU citizenship, I would not as a result necessarily have concluded that the franchise arrangements put in place by the Scottish Parliament in the Franchise Act contravened EU law."

Observing:

"... in legal terms there is no simple answer, either in law or in fact. They correctly describe the legal situation as sui generis, pointing out that the various EU Treaties do not specifically cover the point. But the difficulty goes further than that. As is apparent from the terms of their Opinion, and as is perhaps obvious to anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the arguments for and against, the decision on continued membership will not ultimately be decided solely as a legal question but will, to a greater or lesser extent, involve questions of hard politics.

The court is not in a position to know fully what political considerations will be brought to bear on the issue, and with what leverage. Accordingly, to ask the court to decide the question whether upon achieving independence Scotland would cease for a time to be a member of the EU, with consequences for its nationals in terms of their citizenship of the EU, would be to ask the court to predict the outcome of robust and complex negotiations. That is a question largely of fact. It is not a task which the court is equipped." 

If I was looking for a skilled advocate to help make an improbable public law case, I'd cheerfully instruct Mr O'Neill, confident he could cobble together something imaginative and take to his pins and make the case to the court with customary vigour and vim. You look to an advocate to put your case, however hopeless.  But politically, this is a dubious, late wrecking enterprise with which I have no sympathy whatever. Questions of the franchise are essentially political, yet we heard sod all from Wallace and his soured comrades when Holyrood came to consider the referendum franchise last year, arguing the case for a broader electoral role, accommodating interested voters south of the border, or elsewhere in these islands. They declined to make that case or campaign for it, winning allies and advancing their argument politically.

Having neglected that opportunity to contribute to our political processes, they now propose to go to law to right a perceived injustice they more or less mutely acceded to using a wildly speculative construction of European Union law. The appropriate place for these debates is the open air of the parliamentary chamber, not the narrow halls of our court houses.  The constitutional debate is fraught enough without the belated sallies of vexatious litigants.

18 comments :

  1. Aidan O'Neill QC - one of the very best.

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    1. I've never met him. He's clearly a smart fellow -- if somewhat misguided in this enterprise.

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  2. I would have thought there's an even more fundamental flaw in the argument: all Scots are British citizens, and that won't change following a yes vote. No-one will have, or could have, their citizenship taken away from them without their consent, no matter where they live.

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    1. Or it won't change immediately, or with obvious or necessary effects. As Lord Glennie noted in Moohan, the big problem of all of this is that courts are terribly badly placed to weigh up and speculate about these matters.

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  3. Is this really about deprivation of EU citizenship rights? I thought it was more about current EU free movement rights. Vivienne Reding has been making noises recently about Member States which remove voting rights from ex pats.

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    1. A bit difficult to decode on the basis of the snippets that we've seen widely distributed, but part of the argument seems - I may be wrong - to hinge on the deprivation question. He might, of course, be suggesting that in and of itself, the failure to enfranchise voters violates freedom of movement rights, without raising the Moohan issue of being outside of the EU and losing our existing liberties within the Union. Either way, it still seems a pretty speculative and dubious contention to me.

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  4. Thanks-useful contribution; insightful and a good read.
    ps
    I see you've come oot-despite being a fine looking loon I think on balance I preferred your avatar-both the graphical representation and nom de plume!

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    1. Only an ankle flash! I'm still the Peat Worrier at heart ;-)

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  5. Wouldn't the start point be an action in the Court of Session since it is the people of Scotland's first line of defence in cases where the Parliament of Scotland has failed in a bill, act or statute to apply the considered will of the people of Scotland - that will being paramount?

    After all the learned QC is actually attacking the legality of a bill of the Scottish Parliament, a bill of the type which the UK Supreme Court has already stated it has no power to alter or set aside if it reflects the considered will of the people of Scotland (see Axa and others vs the Scottish Parliament and others 2012).

    Would the learned QC not also have to succeed in having the Edinburgh Agreement over turned at the UK Supreme Court - which agreed the parameters for the vote in terms of the provenance of the referendum bill, the electorate to be engaged, the straight majority result and the result being binding on both parties to the agreement?

    His or his client's rights surely can only have been breached if the Edinburgh Agreement can be shown to be 'ultra vires' or am I missing something in my fascination with due process?

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    1. None of the law lords giving judgments in Axa said that Acts of the Scottish Parliament were incapable of being altered or set aside if they reflect the considered will of the people of Scotland. In fact, the opposite is true.

      If you read Lord Hope's judgment, what he actually said is that, provided an ASP is within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament, it could not be struck down on the sort of common law review grounds that, for instance, a set of regulations or other secondary legislation could. So you couldn't challenge an ASP on the grounds that it was "irrational" or "unreasonable" or that it pursued "improper purposes" or that it frustrated a "legitimate expectation" and the like.

      The justification for this is that, as a self-standing democratic legislature, the Scottish Parliament is not comparable to a government minister or agency, and has been bestowed with a general range of competences within which to discern what legislation is necessary for Scotland. The courts readily admit that they are not better placed than a democratic legislature to determine what is representative of the will of the people of Scotland, so they do not enquire into how the Parliament arrived at that conclusion.

      But there are reasons other than "the people didn't consent to this" that a court might strike down a piece of legislation. You can challenge an Act of the Scottish Parliament on the grounds that it is outside of its legislative competence. If an ASP would contravene EU law, Convention law, or encroach upon a reserved matter, then that is not a question of common law challenge. It is a statutory limitation and the courts have both the jurisdiction and the obligation to strike down provisions which would overreach the competence of the Scottish Parliament. As Lord Rodger put it in Whaley v Watson, the Scottish Parliament is an entity which depends upon and is the result of a statute. It isn't sovereign.

      Lord Hope's comments in Axa came with precisely this caveat, and certain Nationalists would do well to understand the nuance of that point.

      As it happens, I don't think the legislation concerning the franchise does in fact violate EU law. LPW has it right. This is a completely lost cause.

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    2. Ibid. I'm afraid that you're seriously misreading AXA, Peter. As to the Edinburgh Agreement, in a legal sense, it isn't relevant. It was the Order in Council which clearly settled the issue of Holyrood's competence here. If O'Neill could make out his case - that EU law required the franchise to be extended to all Scottish born electors, or such like - then the courts would declare Holyrood's Franchise legislation ultra vires under the Scotland Act, as Holyrood is obliged to adhere to and uphold EU law. The Edinburgh Agreement is a politically significant document, but it isn't markedly relevant to the resolution of this dispute -- if it seriously emerges. Which is a big "if".

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  6. Despite your verbosity, LPW, it never ceases to amaze me how a point of arcane legal principle becomes familiar to this reader as a matter of everyday political concern through your deft explanations. You truly are an invaluable commentator.

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    1. Not despite but surely because of my verbosity! ;-)

      Kind of you to say, Craig. That's always the goal.

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  7. Interesting,and one point is will the Westminster government defend itself in court as the only way to decided if we lose our citizenship of the EU is for the Westminster government to ask the EU,a question they have,so far refused to ask,maybe a better case is being made for us YESSER's?

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    1. The Advocate-General could intervene if this ever gets into court - but strictly speaking, it would be a case of an individual challenging the lawfulness of Holyrood's statute under the Scotland Act and the Lord Advocate would have to make the case for its legality. But given the expense, I'd be surprised if it gets that far. But you never know. There are plenty of folk with more money than sense.

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    2. That and it is likely that the Advocate General, not wanting a legal challenge to cause problems, would likely intervene to agree with the Lord Advocate and the Parliament.

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  9. I agree entirely that the wider franchise proposition is hopeless. Indeed HAD the Parliament attempted to enfranchise people not currently living in Scotland that would, to my mind, have been more open to legal challenge as being beyond the legal competence, never mind the territorial jurisdiction, of the Scottish Parliament.

    Anyway, how might an electoral register be drawn up? By turning up at your (local) electoral registration in Liverpool, or the British Consulate in Karachi. and presenting your (Scottish) birth certificate? Or the birth certificate of either, or possibly both, of your parents? Three out of four grand parents, or one out of four? We are not choosing eleven men or women to form a football team here. We are trying to devise a viable way to make a decision.

    That having been said, there is an arcane point lurking in the undergrowth.

    IF

    (a) There is a Yes vote

    (b) Scotland proceeds to sovereign independence without first securing EU membership

    (c) rUK denied willing Scottish residents the right to opt for continued British citizenship (and thus EU citizenship) in that eventuality

    Then I suspect EU Law would be engaged in respect of the rights of the individuals concerned.

    Since I don't personally get past the first premise in my considerations, the whole question is practically academic but it would make an entertaining moot.

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