MacCormick v Lord Advocate
A Scottish court suggested that the Acts of Union may impose limits on Parliament, while declining to decide the point.
Facts
When Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1952, she was proclaimed as Elizabeth the Second. Mr MacCormick, the Rector of Glasgow University, challenged this, arguing that because there had never been a Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom or of Scotland, the numeral contradicted the Treaty and Acts of Union of 1707, which he argued were fundamental law that the UK Parliament could not change.
Legal principle
The Court of Session dismissed the challenge, holding that the numeral was a matter of the royal prerogative and that the claimants had no title to sue. However, Lord President Cooper said, obiter, that the principle of the unlimited sovereignty of Parliament is a distinctively English principle which has no counterpart in Scottish constitutional law, and that the UK Parliament, created by the Treaty of Union, might not be free to alter its fundamental provisions. He also said that the question of whether a breach of the Treaty could be challenged in the courts was not justiciable. The case is cited in debates about whether parliamentary sovereignty has limits.
Related cases on parliamentary sovereignty
- British Coal Corp v The King [1935] AC 500
- Cheney v Conn [1968] 1 WLR 242
- Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway Co v Wauchope (1842) 8 Cl & F 710
- Ellen Street Estates Ltd v Minister of Health [1934] 1 KB 590
- Lee v Bude and Torrington Junction Railway Co (1871) LR 6 CP 576
- Madzimbamuto v Lardner-Burke [1969] 1 AC 645
- Manuel v Attorney General [1983] Ch 77
- Mortensen v Peters (1906) 8 F (J) 93
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