Volume 2

In this chapter, the author argues that the establishment of the UK Supreme Court imported a new and much broader conception of judicial independence that goes beyond protecting judicial decision-making in individual cases from direct interference by the executive and legislature: the UK Supreme Court now interacts with the other branches of government as a distinct institution instead of working alongside them as a component of Parliament. It is argued that this new judicial independence demands institutional autonomy and increasingly formal interactions between the judiciary and the other branches of government. The chapter then considers the implications of the new judicial independence in terms of the legitimacy of judicial law-making by the UK Supreme Court, offering a comparison with the experience of the apex courts of Canada and the United States.

This chapter argues that law reform is the pursuit and progressive realisation of the ideal form of law through a programme of positive and significant legal change from within the legal field. The chapter concludes that the UK Supreme Court and the Law Commissions are complementary and the only instruments of law reform operating in the United Kingdom today.