The Courts of Justice in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s adhesion to the European Treaties through the European Communities Act 1972 has led to the fall of the principle of sovereignty of Parliament, the main pillar of the British constitutional system, as it gives European institutions the right to lay down legal rules with the same binding force as an Act of Parliament and thereby recognizes Community law’s precedence. This has also brought about a radical change in the sources of  since, though common law was hitherto its main source, the United Kingdom, from its accession to the European Community onwards, has been forced to enact much more legislation and written law has thus become, as in the continent, an original source of law. As a result there has been a full transformation of the traditional system of free diffuse jurisdiction and formal application of the law. British courts of justice have had to accept the principle of Community law’s supremacy and with it the overruling   interpretation authority of the European Court of Justice, and have therefore been compelled to look for other interpretation criteria. A chronological study of British case-law, which its fluctuations  resulting from the Luxemburg Court’s own case-law, enables us to see how  the  courts in the United Kingdom have consistently moved from literal interpretation to a finalistic  of  teleological one, alongside with the  theory of fiction and of  concurring interpretation, with all the problems arising from it. There are those who have interpreted this development in a negative way, which will in the end lead to the loss of the United Kingdom’s marks of identity. Others on the contrary find it positive, to the extent that British courts, not being bound by a single (written) fundamental law, will be able to invoke the whole series of English constitutional instruments, and will not be tied down any  more to a closed set of laws (corpus iuris)  with a  hierarchically preeminent rank  in  the whole legal system.