Building the UK's New Supreme Court

Andrew Le Sueur read law at the London School of Economics and was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1987. From 1988 to 2000 he taught in the Faculty of Laws, UCL before being appointed to the Barber Chair of Jurisprudence at The University of Birmingham in 2001. He is a visiting research fellow at UCL Constitution Unit.

• PART I: INTRODUCTION ; 1. Comparative Lesson Learning and the Court Reform Agenda ; PART II: TOP-LEVEL NATIONAL COURTS IN DEVOLVED AND FEDERAL CONTEXTS ; 2. Scottish Perspectives on Top Court Reform ; 3. Northern Ireland Perspectives on Top Court Reform ; 4. Canadian Attempts to Accommodate Regional Difference in Court Design ; 5. Ideas of 'representation' in United Kingdom Court Structures ; 6. The Spanish Experience of Division of Powers Adjudication ; 7. The Canadian Experience of Division of Powers Adjudication ; PART III: TOP-LEVEL NATIONAL COURTS IN THE WIDER EUROPE ; 8. The Bundesverfassungsgericht, the European Court of Justice, and the European Court of Human Rights ; 9. The Law Lords and the European Courts ; PART IV: INTERMEDIATE COURTS OF APPEAL AND TOP-LEVEL NATIONAL COURTS ; 10. The Court of Appeal in England and Wales and the House of Lords ; 11. The US Supreme Court and Federal Courts of Appeals ; 12. Choosing Cases ; PART V: JUDGES ; 13. Judicial Appointments in the Era of Human Rights and Devolution ; 14. Relationships between Bar and Bench

The book is a valuable and timely contribution that will leave the reader with a sense of the competing demands and pressures on the designers of the Supreme Court. The book does not so much prescribe a vision for the court, but rather identifies how the various choices will have a substantive impact on the UK's political and legal culture. Any reader of this volume will gain a clear understanding of the important and complex issues that have been raised by the government's decision to create a Supreme Court.