Summary

Courts in the United Kingdom have evolved gradually over the past 700 years. The modern court system is sophisticated, displaying both specialization by area of law and regional differentiation. The English and Welsh court system, for example, is separated from the Scottish and Northern Irish court systems. Across all different jurisdictions within the UK, courts display moderate to high levels of de facto judicial independence without many guarantees of de jure judicial independence. Appointment to the courts system since the reforms of 2005 is strongly apolitical; this, coupled with a weak form of fundamental rights review, means that debates about judicial politics have been limited. Particularly sensitive issues arise in relation to courts’ handling of multilevel governance, and more particularly the relationship between the Westminster Parliament and the devolved assemblies in Scotland and Wales, and between the Westminster Parliament and the Court of Justice of the European Union. Because of the gradual introduction of human rights guarantees in domestic law, and progressive devolution of power from center to periphery, UK courts offer lessons for those interested in the introduction of rights catalogs and in theories of constitutional review.