CPL Seminar: 'A first attempt at making sense of Rahmatullah'

Speaker: Professor David Feldman

On 17th January, after deliberating for between eight and 14 months, the Supreme Court delivered judgment in three related cases arising out of the UK’s involvement in the “War on Terror” abroad.  Across 16 separate opinions running to about 320 pages, the Justices reconsidered a range of constitutional issues, including the varieties and effects of the doctrine of “act of state”, the relationship, as a matter of English constitutional law, between international humanitarian law, international human-rights law, and Security Council Resolutions made under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and the doctrine of state immunity.  This seminar will start the process of analysing the judgments and considering their significance for the evolution of our constitution.

The cases are:

Belhaj v. Straw, Rahmatullah (No 1) v. Ministry of Defence and another [2017] UKSC 3, mainly on state immunity and foreign act of state;

Rahmatullah (No 2) v. Ministry of Defence and another, Mohammed and another v. Ministry of Defence and another [2017] UKSC 1, mainly on Crown act of state;

Al-Waheed v. Ministry of Defence, Mohammed v. Ministry of Defence [2017] UKSC 2, mainly on the power to detain under international humanitarian law, UNSC Resolutions, and the ECHR.