Common Law Constraints: Whose Common Good Counts?

Abstract

This working paper for a conference, held at the Cambridge Centre for Public Law in January 2008, between the Court of Appeal's judgment in Bancoult (No. 2) and the hearing of the appeal in July 2008, argues that the Court of Appeal judgments err in their handling of (a) the context and purport of the Colonial Laws Validity Act 1865, (b) the location of the Crown in the undivided realm comprising the United Kingdom and its Overseas Territories (a matter mishandled by the majority of the Lords in Quark Fishing (2006), (c) the common good legitimately in view in the making of the prerogative legislation - regulating immigration to the British Indian Ocean Territory - overturned in Bancoult (No. 2).