On 18 March and 1 May 2013, at the Scottish Parliament and Glasgow City Chambers respectively, the Scottish Constitutional Futures Forum (SCFF), Human Rights Consortium Scotland, Glasgow Human Rights Network, and Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network came together at the Scottish Parliament to discuss the place of human rights and Scotland’s constitutional future; an issue which has been largely side-lined in the independence debate to date.
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Together with Jim Gallagher and Guy Lodge, I have recently published Scotland’s Choices: the referendum and what happens afterwards (Edinburgh University Press, 2013).
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The impact of constitutional change on environmental law in Scotland was the focus of an event held in Dundee as part of both the SCFF programme and the University of Dundee’s Five Million Questions project, a knowledge exchange programme aiming to inform the debate in the run-up to the referendum.
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As the House of Lords Constitution Committee pointed out in its short report on what was then the Scotland Bill in 2011, while the devolutionary principle of Home Rule has now been accepted, indeed embraced, by all three of the UK’s main political parties, the consequences of devolution for Whitehall and Westminster continue to be unresolved.
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I have never met Kenneth Roy, but have long been an admirer of his journalism. I am a Friend of the Scottish Review and sing its praises to any and all who will listen.
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The debate over Scottish independence has turned recently to discussion of the post-referendum landscape. On 5 February the Scottish Government published Scotland's Future: from the Referendum to Independence and a Written Constitution which suggests that a two stage process would follow upon a majority Yes vote.
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In a speech to the Foreign Press Association, First Minister Alex Salmond argued that an independent Scotland needs a written constitution in order to be a ‘modern state’.
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At the fourth public event of the Scottish Constitutional Futures Forum, held at the University of Edinburgh School of Law on 27 February, Prof. Christine Bell and Prof. Neil Walker of the Law School discussed the constitutional process governing the forthcoming independence referendum of 2014.
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On January 23, 2013 the Catalan Parliament adopted the Declaration of Sovereignty and Right to Decide of the Catalan People.[1] The Declaration proclaims ‘the people of Catalonia’ to be ‘a sovereign political and legal subject’ with a ‘right to decide … their collective political future’.
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Debates leading up to the creation of the Scottish parliament demonstrated the huge potential to galvanise thinking about political change and the promotion of gender equality. However, women's voices and issues of gender equality and gender justice have been curiously absent from the current debates around constitutional futures in Scotland.
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Devolution created a constitutional difficulty for the civil service in Scotland – it irrevocably split the loyalties of Her Majesty’s civil servants.
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With the question now agreed for the Referendum, the Scottish Government published a plan on February 5th 2013 for what happens next – that is, between a Yes vote and the declaration of Independence in 2016. Significantly this outlines the parameters of drawing up a written constitution, a process that will begin post-independence.
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Countries that are used to referendums on constitutional matters use them sparingly. The UK has no such constitutional requirement, but faces the possibility of having to deal with two such referendums within the space of a few years.
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On Wednesday, the Electoral Commission published its much anticipated reports on the question to be asked in the 2014 independence referendum and on campaign spending limits.
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Last week the Catalan Parliament adopted a ‘Declaration of Sovereignty of the Catalan People’, as the first step in its plan of ‘National Transition’, leading up to the holding of a referendum on the constitutional future of Catalonia in 2014.
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The European Union dimension of the coming Scottish Independence debate is perhaps best approached by asking:
- What kind of Union will it then be, and will Britain's position in it have changed?
- Should an independent Scotland want to be in the Union?
- Would an independent Scotland be welcome in the Union?
- Would becoming an independent member be difficult, or costly?
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On 18 January, the Scottish Constitutional Futures Forum held its second public event – a seminar at the University of Strathclyde on Energy Policy and Constitutional Change.
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In this post I have tried to set out my analysis of the position in European Union law if there is a vote in favour of Scottish independence in the 2014 referendum.
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In 2007 the Scottish Government launched the National Conversation. This was an exercise to get people talking about independence. Although things have moved on quite a bit since then, it’s worth noting that the Scottish Government has achieved one of its objectives. We’re all discussing Scotland’s constitutional future in a way we were not a decade ago.
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The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has in the past two weeks appointed seven one year senior fellowships with overall funding of £1.3 million.
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One of the key questions in the EU segment of the constitutional debate in Scotland is whether an independent Scotland could be required, under EU law, to adopt the Euro as its currency against the wishes of its government.
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Giving evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s Referendum (Scotland) Bill Committee on the draft section 30 Order this morning, I was struck by the number of questions from the Committee about the precise legal effects of the Memorandum of Agreement between the UK and Scottish Government and of the section 30 Order.
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On Monday 15 October 2012, the Prime Minister of the UK government and the First Minister of the Scottish Parliament, publicly signed in a formal ceremony a document entitled simply ‘Agreement between the United Kingdom Government and the Scottish Government on an Independence Referendum for Scotland, now known colloquially (in Scotland at least) as the ‘Edinburgh Agreement’ ...
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The advice of the Scottish Law Officers may have become highly conspicuous by its absence in recent days, but over the years other prominent figures, including some excellent legal minds, have offered their considered opinion on the implications of Scottish independence for EU membership.
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The crucial question over the next two years is a superficially simple one: “What does ‘Scotland as an independent country’ mean”?
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Yesterday, David Cameron and Alex Salmond signed an historic Memorandum of Agreement on a Referendum on Independence for Scotland (MoA), which includes the text of a draft Order under section 30 of the Scotland Act 1998 to confer express powers on the Scottish Parliament to enact legislation authorising such a referendum.
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Typical. You wait ages for one regional parliament to call for a referendum, then two come along at once. Scotland’s own path towards a referendum can now be compared to Catalonia’s call for an independence plebiscite. Self determination must be contagious, but the international law doctrine of self-determination is an angle that has been overlooked at times in the independence debate.
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The debate about Scotland’s constitutional future promises to be a debate about more powers for the Scottish Parliament, be it in the form of an independent Scotland, ‘independence-lite’, ‘devo-max’ or however else we want to describe our vision of the promised land.
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