Reflections on continental European Supreme Courts

Abstract

The Government's Consultation Paper Constitutional Reform: A Supreme Court for the United Kingdom (July 2003) is interesting in that it is written as an argument for a technical ‘fix’. The argument essentially is that we need to separate the Appellate Committee from the political House of Lords and abolish the Lord Chancellor. The discussion then focuses on how this can be done with the minimum change to the jurisdiction and composition of the existing courts. There is no attempt at strategic thinking. It is constitutional reform by way of incremental change. What I want to do here is to use some continental European experiences to suggest a number of strategic questions which either do not appear in the Consultation Paper from the Department of Constitutional Affairs or which are handled too rapidly, but which are important for the future functioning of a Supreme Court. There are only a limited number of lessons which can be learnt from any comparative survey. In this inquiry, as in many, the contrasts between legal systems only raise questions, rather than offering solutions. It is an agenda-setting exercise.