EU Referendum questions: The constitutional implications of the referendum

Cambridge Centre for European Legal Studies (CELS) Podcast

Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge

Education, Business, Society & Culture

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🗓️ 17 June 2016

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

In this ongoing series of short recordings, academics from the University of Cambridge and beyond shed light on the key issues to be considered in the run up to the upcoming referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union.

This interview features Professor David Feldman, Rouse Ball Professor of English Law. Professor Feldman discusses the unique nature of the EU referendum, and the potential consequences to the democratic process of Government in the UK depending on the outcome of the vote on 23rd June.

This series has been created by the Centre for European Legal Studies (CELS). For more information visit http://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm delighted this afternoon to be joined by Professor David Feldman, who's the Rouseball Professor of English Law at the University of Cambridge.
0:16.0	David, could you introduce us to your field of expertise and tell us a little bit about how it might be important in the run-up to the referendum?
0:24.6	I'm a constitutional lawyer and a public lawyer generally, and I also have an interest in human rights and civil liberties.
0:34.6	And the main significance of the referendum for my field is the way in which
0:40.8	a decision one way or the other, and indeed the decision to have the referendum at all, has
0:46.9	affected constitutional principles, including the idea of representative government, the
0:53.6	idea that important decisions about the direction of the country are taken not by us,
1:00.0	but by the people we elect to make those sorts of decisions on our behalf, and on the so-called legislative sovereignty of Parliament and also on the way in which government
1:16.7	is carried on. Cabinet government, the idea of government as a collective activity with
1:23.2	common responsibility to the House of Commons and to a less extent the House of Lords.
1:30.3	I think all of those are affected by the way in which the referendum has been set up and the possible implications of the result.
1:40.3	Okay, so what are the possible implications of, for instance, a leave vote on the way we practice democracy in this country?
1:48.7	Well, the first point to note is that we don't know the answer to that, because we've never, in the past, had a referendum in which there's been a result which has gone contrary
2:05.8	to the expressed view of the leader of our government, our national government, and the
2:15.3	possibilities that might arise if that were to happen would be extremely uncertain.
2:21.3	First of all, we would presumably have the question, or it may only be a theoretical question,
2:28.3	whether the government was prepared to accept and act on the decision expressed through the referendum.
2:36.0	Of course the referendum is non-binding and if it were to become binding,
2:43.0	then it would be a serious restriction of what we previously thought of as parliamentary sovereignty,
2:49.0	the power of our representatives in Parliament, to decide
2:53.6	and legislate for important matters of public policy.
3:00.6	It would also cause problems for cabinet government itself, because the cabinet is usually seen as a unit. We expect
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