Discuss the extent to which the various political and legal mechanisms under the UK’s constitutional setup are effective in holding Government to account.

Question 1
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same
hands, whether of one, a few, or many… may justly be pronounced the very
definition of tyranny.”
Madison J, Federalist Paper (No.47), 30 January 1788 (Signet Classics 2013).
Discuss the above quotation in relation to the system of Separation of Powers
in the UK.
Question 2
Discuss the extent to which UK membership of the EU and Council of Europe might
have impacted upon theorists’ views of the doctrine of Parliamentary Supremacy.
Question 3
Discuss the extent to which the various political and legal mechanisms under the
UK’s constitutional setup are effective in holding Government to account. Include
discussion of the constitutional conventions of Individual and Collective Ministerial
Responsibility in your answer.
Question 4
“[A]cceptance of the rule of law as a constitutional principle requires that a citizen,
before committing himself to any course of action, should be able to know in advance
what are the legal consequences that will flow from it.”
Lord Diplock, Black-Clawson International Ltd v Papierwerke Waldhof-Aschaffenberg
AG [1975] 591 at 638
Discuss with reference to the ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ schools of thought, citing
academic evidence in support of your argument.
Page 4 of 4
SECTION B – COMPULSORY PROBLEM QUESTION
The Public Order Act 2019 (POA) (this is a fictitious Act) sets out conditions on the
conduct of public protests. Below are three sections from the Act:
S1: prior authorisation must be obtained from the police authority where a
public protest
(a) causes an obstruction on a public road, or
(b) involves 50 or more adults.
S2: equipment for a public protest may be confiscated if in the view of the
police the equipment would endanger life.
S3: At least one police officer must attend any public protest where children
are likely to be present.
Daisy is a teacher at Minster Secondary School and runs a ‘Greening the
Environment’ class for 15-year old pupils. On 20th April after school, Daisy’s class
gathered in the school playground to hand out leaflet invitations to other
schoolchildren and their parents to join an anti-pollution protest by helping to clear
away rubbish from the riverbank. Before they could finish handing out the leaflets, the
police arrived and confiscated the leaflets. Daisy immediately asked the Police Chief
for a meeting but the Police Chief refused.
That evening at the riverbank, the police met 50 schoolchildren, a few of them with
their parents, carrying rubber gloves, brushes and rubbish-bags. The police stopped
them from going to the riverbank and confiscated their items including Daisy’s
smartphone before instructing them to go home. The Police Chief told Daisy that the
police had better things to do than waste time “looking after stupid trouble-makers”.
Environmental Rescue (ER) is a campaign group who in the past have been
consulted by the government on some environmental issues, although were not
consulted prior to the enactment of the POA. They wish to challenge the police
decisions.
Advise Daisy and Environmental Rescue, citing only Public law judicial review
issues.