Parliament

Abstract This chapter considers the lessons to be learned from the UK’s membership of the EU and recent case law on the Withdrawal Agreement for the long-debated issue as to whether Parliament can ‘bind its successors’. It argues that the case law from both eras firmly establishes that Parliament may itself, with the acquiescence of the courts, endow statutes with resistance to implied repeal, hence with the status of ‘constitutional statutes’. It follows that the assertion from Thoburn that only the common law may do this has always been wrong. This change is significant but, since it affects only the doctrine of implied repeal, leaves the core of parliamentary sovereignty untouched. It remains an open but unproven contention that the common law may additionally badge certain statutes as ‘constitutional’ because of the importance of their subject matter, à la Thoburn. The post-Brexit case law has neither confirmed nor denied this. Finally, it contends that Parliament’s proven ability to impose such requirements of form must be sharply distinguished from the theory that it can also impose restrictions of ‘manner’—better referred to, following Goldsworthy, as imposing binding restrictive procedures on its future self, via for example requirements for super-majorities. Hence it argues that the phrase ‘manner and form’ should be consigned to the constitutional dustbin.