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Court | Supreme Court of the United Kingdom |
Full case name |
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Argued | 17–19 September 2019 |
Decided | 24 September 2019 |
Neutral citation | 2019 UKSC 41 |
Case history | |
Prior history | |
Holding | |
The use of the prerogative power of prorogation is justiciable. The Prime Minister's advice to the Queen to prorogue Parliament, and the resulting Order in Council, were unlawful because they had "the effect of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions as a legislature and as the body responsible for the supervision of the executive". The order was void, and Parliament was not legally prorogued. | |
Court membership | |
Judges sitting | Hale, Reed, Kerr, Wilson, Carnwath, Hodge, Black, Lloyd-Jones, Arden, Kitchin, Sales |
Case opinions | |
Majority | Unanimous |
Area of law | |
R (Miller) v The Prime Minister and Cherry v Advocate General for Scotland ([2019] UKSC 41), also known as Miller II and Miller/Cherry, were joint landmark constitutional law cases on the limits of the power of royal prerogative to prorogue the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Argued before the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in September 2019, the case concerned whether the advice given by the prime minister, Boris Johnson, to Queen Elizabeth II that Parliament should be prorogued in the prelude to the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union was lawful.
On 24 September 2019, in a unanimous decision by eleven justices, the court found that the matter was justiciable, and that Johnson's advice was unlawful; this upheld the ruling of the Inner House of the Court of Session in Cherry, and overturned the High Court of Justice's ruling in Miller. As a result, the Order in Council permitting the prorogation was null and of no effect and Parliament had, in fact, not been prorogued.