Law Weblog

The Hunting Act saga; R (on the application of Jackson and others) v Attorney General (2005) CA

Wednesday 16 February 2005 at 5:43 pm | In News | Post Comment

Held: “For the reasons we have given we have accepted that there was power to amend the 1911 Act to the extent of the amendment contained in the 1949 Act.”

In the Administrative Court the case was treated as an ordinary case turning on a point of statutory interpretation. The Court of appeal ruled that it is not such a case. English courts do not normally have jurisdiction to consider the validity of an English statute. So far as the validity of a statute is concerned, the following observation of Lord Campbell in Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway Co. v Wauchope (1842) has always been accepted as correct: “…all that a Court of Justice can do is look to the Parliament Roll; if from that it should appear that a bill has passed both Houses and received the Royal Assent, no Court of Justice can inquire into the mode in which it was introduced into Parliament, nor into what was done previous to its introduction, or what passed in Parliament, during its progress in its various stages through Parliament.”

The court suggested that while they are not interfering with Parliament’s activity in this case, if the the scale of the constitutional change proposed by any amendment were greater, the more likely it is that it will fall outside the powers contained in the 1911 Act.

Appeal to the House of Lords refused, but the claimants are to petition the Lords directly.