![handle is hein.journals/judire21 and id is 1 raw text is:
[2016] JR DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10854681.2016.1145485
Public Law in the Supreme Court
2014-2015
Christopher Knight and Tom Cross
11 KBW
1. Our sixth annual round-up of the ten most interesting public law judgments delivered by
the Supreme Court, in the legal year 2014-2015, has been more difficult this year than
some of the recent past. In particular, the 2014-2015 year, whilst perhaps not one
which will be described as vintage, was filled with quite a number of genuinely interest-
ing and important decisions. The authors confess that in some years the debate between
them has been what can be included to bring the summaries up to ten, whereas in this
year a number of cases which on any other year would easily have made the round-up
have had to miss out.
2. This is perhaps a reflection of the continuing disproportionate amount of the Supreme
Court's workload which can be roughly characterised as involving public law. This
year, we calculate some 36 of the 71 judgments delivered during the legal year were
on matters of public law, which amounts to some 51 per cent of the cases. Court-watchers
will note that the output of the court has increased from the figures of its first few years,
and public law percentage is broadly creeping up as well. As usual, we have appended to
the end of our ten summaries the list of public law judgments.
3. We do not usually give honourable mentions to cases which missed out on discussion,
but readers may find it useful to look at the judgments of the Supreme Court in R (Bour-
gass) v Secretary of State for Justice [2015] UKSC 54 [2015] 3 WLR 457, Greater Glasgow
Health Board v Doogan [2014] UKSC 68 [2015] AC 640, R (Rotherham Metropolitan
Borough Council) v Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills [2015] UKSC 6
[2015] PTSR 322 and Beghal v Director of Public Prosecutions [2015] UKSC 49 [2016] AC
88, any of which could easily have been included in our list of ten this year without
any significant protest. We hope the choices we have made, however, continue to
reflect the broad range of public law considered by the court (although there is a signifi-
cant focus this year on cases considering the nature of the proportionality test in its
various incarnations) and the issues of wider legal significance to those working in the
public law field.
R (Barclay) v Lord Chancellor (No. 2) [2014] UKSC 54 [2015] AC 276
4. The ongoing enmity on the island of Sark between the island's authorities, particularly
the Sark legislature the Chief Pleas, and the Barclay brothers (owners of the Telegraph
amongst various other assets) has generated a fair amount of litigation and R (Barclay)
v Lord Chancellor (No. 2) is one of those which gives rise to some interesting constitutional
issues far beyond the relatively mundane context of the case itself.
5. That context was a challenge to the legality of an Order in Council, made under the Royal
Prerogative, which gave assent to the Reform (Sark) (Amendment) (No. 2) Law 2010. The
2010 Law removed the Seneschal, the chief judge of the island, from the post of President
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/judire21&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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