Diritto Pubblico Comparato ed Europeo

Sommario

1. Premessa. – 2. Le pedine della scacchiera. – 3. Una visuale semplice, e una complessa. – 4. Un reshuffle dagli effetti molto impegnativi. – 5. Ulteriori annotazioni sulla tecnica blairiana del rimpasto governativo. – 6. Le disposizioni del Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs Order 2003. – 7. L’Order e la sovranità del Parlamento. – 8. La globale revisione dell’architettura costituzionale. – 9. Verso una Corte Suprema?. – 10. Considerazioni finali.

Abstract

By acting as the final output of the peculiar combination of a sudden reshuffle (June 2003) and the delivering of an Order in Council (July-August), the establishment of the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, far from being a mere change in the very structure of the British executive, envisages a far-reaching reform that is focused on a rather new approach to the British Constitution. An unusually comprehensiveness of the premiership’s constitutional view, connecting the devolution issue and the reshaping of the traditional patronage machinery for judges, is giving the basic functional design to the newly-established Cabinet post that shall be the substitute of the Lord Chancellor. It can be emphasized that Tony Blair’s overall commitment for change of the UK constitutional system has been fully implemented through the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs Order 2003: an instrument whose apparent aim is firstly to abolish the Lord Chancellor (that was a first-class officer in Parliament, in the Executive and in the Judiciary as well) and to transfer its department under the remit of the new ministry, and secondly to give the Law Lords and the Courts an actually independent standing and a safer room within a full system of separation of power. But the final perspective of the reform is to implement the effectiveness of justice, to ensure the basic rights and to improve democracy, and even to change the design of the UK constitutional order as a whole, as is easily suggested by the reformer’s idea of a Supreme Court to be soon established. As to the devolution issue, many voices are emphasizing that the reform is half-baked, and that a new kind of part-time Secretaries of State (the Scottish and the Welsh, dealing with the devolved institutions) are now affected by an odd allocation under the direction of the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs: the new system is likely to give place to some confusion in the concrete performance of the relationships between Whitehall and the devolution system, but the strategic constitutional impact of the reform and its comprehensiveness cannot be denied even by the most critical constitutional lawyer.