
Sir Stephen Laws
Senior Fellow, Judicial Power Project
Sir Stephen Laws KCB QC (Hon) is a Senior Research Fellow on Policy Exchange’s Judicial Power Project. He was First Parliamentary Counsel from 2006-12. As such, he was the Permanent Secretary in the Cabinet Office responsible for the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel (an office in which he had served as a legislative drafter since 1976), for the offices of the Government Business Managers in both Houses and for constitutional advice to the centre of Government. After he retired in 2012, he was a member of the McKay Commission on the consequences of devolution for the House of Commons and subsequently a member of the advisory panel for Lord Strathclyde’s review of secondary legislation and the primacy of the House of Commons. He writes on constitutional and legal matters He is a Senior Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, an Honorary Senior Research Associate at University College London and an Honorary Fellow of the University of Kent Law School.

Related Posts & Publications


The Contest to “Take Control” of Brexit
by Sir Stephen Laws | Jan 19, 2019
Related Content Current proposals for Parliament to “take over the process” are based on fundamental misconceptions about the UK constitution, and that makes them both dangerous and wrong. This paper explains how. Download Related Content Stay Up To DateJoin Our...
How to Exit the Backstop
by Sir Stephen Laws | Dec 3, 2018
Read Publication On 11 December, the House of Commons must vote on whether to approve the Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration setting out the framework for the future relationship between the UK and the EU. At this point, it seems there is no majority...
Judicial Intervention in Parliamentary Proceedings
by Sir Stephen Laws | Nov 19, 2018
Related Content The Inner House of the Court of Session in Scotland acted wrongly in referring to the Court of Justice of the EU the question of whether the UK can unilaterally revoke Article 50 and so remain in the EU As the UK Supreme Court urgently considers the...
Second-Guessing Policy Choices: The rule of law after the Supreme Court’s UNISON judgment
by Sir Stephen Laws | Mar 14, 2018
Read Publication In the UNISON case, the Supreme Court quashed the Government’s use of its statutory power to impose fees for employment tribunal proceedings. It ruled that the fees were unlawful because the level at which they had been set had the effect in...Stay Up To Date
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