I doubt that the KlimaSeniorinnen judgment will help states better address climate change – but it certainly helps seal the case for states to withdraw from the ECHR.
Changes to the definition of the family could have serious consequences for tax, inheritance law, and other important areas. Yet the politicians are leaving the new definition up to the judges.
Fail to address the challenge head-on, and conservatives will find that our constitution continues to evolve away from its roots, each new Labour government bringing in new measures to ‘modernise’ our ‘anachronistic’ system.
To insist that judges must have the final say would displace Parliament’s proper role as the ultimate decision-maker in our constitution.
The rebels have a fair case that the Government’s previous attempts to thread the needle on deportations have failed, and may fail again. But that doesn’t mean their amendments would get planes in the air.
It is important not to mistake the salience of high-profile controversies as a sign that the system is failing; indeed it often is the exact opposite. As a sign of the effectiveness of the current regime, look no further than the premiership of Boris Johnson.
The Supreme Court could only decide it had the power to strike down legislation if it already possessed that power. Authority cannot be established by appeal to itself.
Whether the approach taken – of trying to avoid a head-on collision with our international obligations by seeking to overrule them in specific cases – will prove effective, either here or in the long term, is an open question.
At the end of the day, people will only stop coming here illegally when they know that they cannot stay, will be detained and quickly removed to a safe third country.
It is one thing to insist that the executive operates within the constraints of the law; it is quite another, and grossly improper, to claim that the Government cannot try to pass new legislation to alter those constraints.
Like the UK, the country is struggling with the issue of what can be done about unlawful non-citizens who cannot currently be deported and have committed serious crimes.
Complex problems often require international cooperation, and cooperation is more likely to be effective within a framework of mutually respected laws.
The Prime Minister’s mooted emergency legislation seems unlikely to pass; even if it did, there is hardly time before the next election to get the policy operational.
But if such a programme extends beyond stemming the flow of cash (or at least attempting to do so), it is once again going to come back to law and enforcement. And that is thorny ground.
The decision to legislate is not just constitutionally acceptable, it is in fact a shining example of the best traditions of parliament acting powerfully to grant justice to the wronged.