Unlike the United States of America where a judge can refuse to apply any law on the bases is unconstitutional whereas in the UK no one can question an act of parliament and judges cannot refuse to apply and act. An example of this was at a period in time when segregation was still around. This instance a black boy was not allowed to go to a white school, the judge refused to uphold the law because it was unlawful.
Parliament supremacy can be justified by its democratic law making process. This involves electing MP’s on behalf of their constituency, so that once elected they act on their behalf of the voters in parliament.
There is evidence for and against parliament being supreme. One of them is for example Cheney v Conn. This is when a party tried to declare that the Finance Act was in fact illegal. Judges said:
“It is not for a court to say that a parliamentary enactment which is the higher source of the land is illegal”
This quote further suggests that even a group of individuals, like the court could not undermined the parliament’s supremacy.
In The Human Rights Act 1998 Section nineteen refers that when a new legislation is made a government minister makes a statement before the second reading , in section ten of the act it also allows the minister of the crown to amend by orders of any act which has found in courts to be incompatible. These parts of the act further enforce why parliament is still supreme, because only parliament can respond to the various new legislations by altering them or revoking them due to its incompatibility.
There are various arguments against the justification for parliament being supreme .firstly the house of commons effectively dictates what status are passes, and it is only controlled by the majority of seats so parliament as a whole is only controlled by the majority of seats which is not really valid .it is said it should be rephrased as “the supremacy of the political party controlled by the party that hold the most seats.”
Another point of view is that members of parliament usually follow what their party wants rather than the opinions and views of what their constituents want, thus not acting fairly on the constituency which decreases its power.
An additional attitude if of the “first past the post” system which refers to the party who get the most votes , mps are only elected by a small majority and need only 40% to win , the small majority might not be acting on the behalf of their constituencies therefore not very democratic.
Finally it is agued that since becoming a member of the European Union, the supremacy of the parliament is dead as illustrated in the Factortame cases 1990-2000.
These cases show that parliament has lost its power and therefore been classified as “dead”, an example of this was Merchant Shipping Act 1988.
This was passed to prevent fishermen fishing of the coast of Cornwall taking advantage of the British large fishing quota .The Uk government passed the act deliberately and stated all boats fishing in Britain waters must be Uk owned and Uk managed .the Spanish fishermen when to the European Court of Justice(ECJ), for discrimination. The court of appeal were told to suspend the act they responded that British courts could not tamper with an act, suspend it or declare it to be valid as only parliament could do that. However the ECJ enforced that the parliament can change it and that it will.
This followed by and outcry by the judges, this was astounding due to the fact that some one other than parliament tampered with an act and suspended it. Parliamentary supremacy was now referred to as dead and what we have now is European law.
Due to this evidence and various examples, yes parliament is still supreme to an extent as for the Human Rights ACT 1998 as parliament can still pass law however it clearly shows from the case of Factortame its illustrates that in a case of Uk law and EU law, EU law will triumph, although this only concerns certain laws governed by the EU legislations otherwise in other matters parliament will prevail.
