UK court: Parliament suspension ‘unlawful’

Bloomberg

The UK’s top judges inflicted an unprecedented legal defeat on Prime Minister Boris Johnson, branding his controversial decision to suspend parliament unlawful and calling on lawmakers to return to parliament as soon as possible.
The unanimous landmark decision by the 11 judges on Tuesday is a boost for MPs seeking to prevent Johnson pulling the country out of the European Union by October 31 without a deal. By limiting the prime minister’s power to suspend Parliament in the future, the judges also deprived Johnson of one of his last weapons to force through Brexit before his self-imposed deadline.
The decision to prorogue Parliament was “unlawful, void and of no effect,” Judge Brenda Hale, president of the Supreme Court, said delivering the ruling.
The decision to “prorogue parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification.”
The Supreme Court judgment followed three days of hearings, following which the 11 judges had to consider whether they had authority to rule on what Johnson argued was a political matter, whether Johnson’s intent for the suspension was, and, if his motives were to stymie debate, what they could do.