Legislation, human rights and the rule of law: What was wrong with the Northern Ireland Troubles Act 2023 and the Illegal Migrants Act 2023?

Conservative governments since 2016 were certainly no strangers to legal challenges to their policies, or indeed legislation they managed to get through the parliamentary process. The Supreme Court halted both their plans to trigger Brexit without parliamentary approval, and the Prime Minister’s efforts to suspend Parliament in his effort to ‘get Brexit done’. More recently, the Supreme Court declared the Sunak government’s Rwanda deportation policy unlawful and in breach of rights contained in the European Convention, and the its attempts to overrule that decision by getting the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 passed into law were met with significant challenges from Parliament and face further examination before the domestic courts, and possibly the European Court of Human Rights.