Month: June 2014

On 16th June 2014, the Scottish Government finally released a draft copy of the Scottish Independence Bill. The Bill contains a copy of the transitional constitution for an independent Scotland, which is full of interesting stuff. I’ll try to pick out what I think are the most important bits of the Bill and comment on each one. I’ve abbreviated some extracts where the content is technical or just not very interesting. Despite that, this is a very long post. Don’t feel like you have to read the whole thing!

For the impatient, here’s what I found most interesting:

• ‘The people are sovereign’—sounds great, but doesn’t mean much
• Parliament’s power to legislate is ‘subject to the constitution’—but it’s not clear what happens when it does something unconstitutional
• Parliament is required to try and get nuclear weapons out of Scotland
• In a fight between domestic and EU law, the EU always wins
• Scots law which isn’t compatible with the ECHR is automatically ineffective
• Most notably: there’s no indication as to how the constitution can be changed (other than by the people that are writing the permanent one)

Of course, fundamentally this document is all about votes: the referendum isn’t far away, and there are clearly clauses here that are designed to secure votes from particular people. I’ve tried to stay away from the politics as much as possible to concentrate on the law.

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