Could Scotland Hold an Independence Referrendum Under The Claim of Right? The Scottish Claim of Right makes clear that the people of Scotland are Sovereign, not Westminster. However, under the rest of UK law, Westminster/Parliament is Sovereign. Given the Supreme Court has ruled that the Scottish Parliament can't hold a referrendum on Scottish Independence without Westminster's permission, could the Scottish Government choose to overrule this (or at least attempt to) by asserting the Claim of Right? I assume I'm misunderstanding something here, because this isn't a route I've heard anyone suggest and I don't expect something this obvious would have been missed. So what am I missing here?
The Scottish Claim of Right makes clear that the people of Scotland are Sovereign, not Westminster. Not so much. It establishes principles of parliamentary monarchy... (for example) That the chargeing of the leidges with lawborrowes at the Kings instance and the imposeing of bonds without the authority of Parliament and the suspending advocats from their Imployment for not Compearing when such bonds were offered were Contrary to Law That the putting of Garisones on privat mens houses in tyme of peace without their Consent or the authority of Parliament is Contrary to law ...while inviting William and Mary to accede to the Scottish throne: The said Estates of the Kingdome of Scotland Doe resolve that William and Mary King and Queen of England France and Ireland Be and be Declared King and Queen of Scotland To hold the Crowne and Royall Dignity of the said Kingdome of Scotland To them the said King and Queen dureing ther lives and the longest liver of them and that the sole and full exercise of the regall power be only in and Exercised by him the said King in the names of the said King and Queen Dureing ther joynt lives And after ther decease The said Croune and Royall Dignity of the said Kingdome to be to the heirs of the body of the said Queen which failing to the Princess Ann of Denmark and the airs of her body which also failing to the aires of the Body of the said William King of England And they do Pray the said King and Queen of England to accept the same accordingly ... That for redress of all greivances and for the amending strenthneing and preserveing of the lawes Parliaments ought to be frequently called and allowed to sit and the freedom of speech and debate secured to the members In other words, it provides that the monarchy is not absolute, and that its power is circumscribed by parliament. One thing it certainly does not do is circumscribe the power of the Westminster parliament, which had no power in Scotland before the Acts of Union of 1707. Before then, the Westminster parliament was only the Parliament of England. The Acts of Union provided, in part, That the United Kingdom of Great Britain be Represented by one and the same Parliament to be stiled the Parliament of Great Britain With that act, the Parliament of Great Britain assumed the role of the Parliament of Scotland. As a consequence, the Claim of Right Act of 1689 grants power to the Westminster parliament rather than circumscribing its power. To the extent the people are sovereign, this sovereignty is vested in their representatives in Westminster. On the other hand, if you're talking about the 1989 claim, that document has never had or claimed any legal force.
Consequence? Yes. Unintended? Not so much. Source Sources of Parliamentary Privilege In new-south-wales, Parliamentary Privilege derives from Article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1688 (no, 1688 is not a mistake) which provides: ... the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament. What are &quot;proceedings in Parliament&quot;? &quot;[P]roceedings in Parliament&quot; is defined by case law. In Canadian and English jurisprudence, the definition includes things done outside Parliament in the furtherance of Parliamentary business such as correspondence, and press releases. The leading cases are Roman Corp Ltd v Hudson's Bay Oil and Gas Co Ltd and Re Clark and Attorney-General of Canada for Canada, and Rost v Edwards for England and Wales. Australian case law is split. The leading case is Australian Broadcasting Corporation v Chatterton in the Full Court of the South Australian Supreme Court where Zelling AJC held that privilege applies to restatements by an MP outside Parliament of things said inside, possibly including answering questions about those things in an interview. Prior J rejected this and Jacob J didn't address it. That's one win, one loss and one DNF for those keeping score. For the Federal Parliament, the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987 defines &quot;proceedings in Parliament&quot; as: ... all words and spoken acts done in the course of, or for purposes of or incidental to, the transacting of the business of a House or of a committee, and, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, includes: (a) the giving of evidence before a House or a committee, and evidence so given; (b) the presentation or submission of a document to a House or a committee; (c) the preparation of a document for purposes of or incidental to the transacting of any such business; and (d) the formulation, making or publication of a document, including a report, by or pursuant to an order of a House or a committee and the document so formulated, made or published The northern-territory has similar legislation. In Laurance v Katter, there was a judicial split in the Court of Appeal in the Queensland Supreme Court about whether this definition was unconstitutional. Pincus JA held that s 16(3) was incompatible with the implied freedom of political communication. Following the High Court's decision in R v Richards; Ex part Fitzpatrick and Browne, Fitzpatrick P held that s 16 could not be invalidated or read down to accommodate the implied freedom of political communication. Davies JA read down s 16(3); in his view, the section was enacted merely to make it clear that parliamentary privilege applies not only where a member or witness is sued but also where evidence is sought to be tendered; in both cases, the privilege applies only where the parliamentary proceedings would be impeached or questioned. Davies JA then held that this was not the case in these proceedings. The High Court gave special leave to appeal this decision but the matter was settled before the appeal was heard. So, the exact boundaries of Parliamentary privilege in Australia remain uncertain. However, a prudent journalist should assume that it extends not just to statements made in the House or before a Committee but to statements about those statements made outside by the MP or their staff. Who has the privilege? The privilege belongs to Parliament, not any individual MP, and can only be waived by Parliament. It cannot be invalidated by the courts due to the doctrine of separation of powers. Australian parliaments take the attitude that the waiver of privilege is a procedural matter about their own internal workings and does not require legislation. In England and Wales, legislation has been passed that allows an MP to waive privilege over their (and only their) statements but no such law exists in Australia. Effect of Parliamentary Privilege There are two limbs to Parliamentary Privilege: It provides absolute immunity to the MP (and possibly their staff) for statements made under privilege. That is, following Barilaro v Shanks-Markovina (No 2) [2021] FCA 950, anything and everything that is under privilege is completely inadmissible in court. By legislation in each Australian jurisdiction, qualified immunity is provided for the &quot;fair and accurate reports of parliamentary proceedings. Thus, a media organization is protected from liability for defamation in respect of the publication of a fair and accurate report of parliamentary proceedings unless the plaintiff can establish that, in publishing the report, the media organization was actuated by malice.&quot; The Federal and Northern Territory legislation appears to go further and may provide absolute immunity but that has not been tested. Actuated by malice Malice in law does not mean what it means in everyday English. It means, with respect to defamation, that a statement was made either knowing that it was untrue or with reckless disregard for its truthfulness. In other words, you were deliberately lying, or you made no effort to find out if you were lying. Within the context of Parliamentary Privilege, you cannot rely on the truthfulness of statements made in Parliament to establish that what you reported was the truth. The existence of the statements might be admissible, for example, to establish if privilege attaches to them but the content of the statements themselves has no probative value. In some ways, this is like a hearsay statement: you can testify that the statement was made (if that's relevant) but you cannot testify that there is any truth-value to what was said. Therefore, if you make a nasty remark (that goes beyond &quot;fair and accurate reports&quot;) and your only reliance on the truthfulness of your statement comes from things under Parliamentary Privilege then you have no defence to a defamation claim. So, accusing someone of perjury for what they said to a parliamentary committee rather than just reporting what they said is clearly actuated by malice: it may be true but you know that you can't prove it's true - that amounts to reckless disregard for the truth. Consequences The purpose of Parliamentary Privilege is to allow MPs to vigorously advance the interests of their constituencies (i.e. us) without the fear that they will be called to account for what they say in either a civil or criminal court. It has been argued that some uses of Parliamentary Privilege are an abuse, particularly where they subvert the operations of the judiciary or law enforcement such as by naming suspects, defendants, and witnesses or where the statements would be defamation but for the privilege. However, if they are, it is for the Parliament to discipline the MP by sanction or expulsion, or for the electorate to do so through the ballot box. Such discipline is rare, partly because no one wants to unleash a weapon that could be turned upon themselves but mostly, because Parliament is loath to interfere in the electorate's right to choose their own representatives even if they are wankers. This privilege is clearly at odds with the principle of free speech and inhibits the ability of media outlets to editorialise on matters covered by privilege. This consequence is not unintended, rather it is a deliberate trade-off of one pillar of democratic life against another.
The change in the royal title came about following the Imperial Conference of 1926, when the various governments of the Empire agreed that &quot;the group of self-governing communities composed of Great Britain and the Dominions&quot; were &quot;autonomous Communities ... equal in status&quot;. The Conference declined to pursue developing any kind of Imperial Constitution, preferring instead to draw out a few specific consequences of that agreement. In the Balfour Declaration, section IV(a) asks for legislation to change the King's title. There is also a longer discussion in V(a) about treaties, which affects the examples that you give in the question. Both of your 1930 examples follow the recommendations in this Declaration. The convention on conflict of nationality laws is entered into by the King, with the governments of his realms separately represented and enumerated. It lists two plenipotentiaries &quot;For Great Britain and Northern Ireland&quot;. The omission of &quot;the United Kingdom of&quot; is not material, much like talking about &quot;the Kingdom of Sweden&quot; versus just &quot;Sweden&quot;. The agreement on Bulgarian financial obligations is between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and various other governments. They both refer to Northern Ireland rather than Ireland but differ in form because they use the different structures of a treaty between sovereigns and an agreement between governments. As noted in the Declaration, prior usage was not always obvious to interpret, because of confusion about whether (say) Canada was meant to be bound by a treaty entered into in the name of the King of Great Britain. Likewise, R v. Jameson [1896] 2 QB 425 is an important case on extent of legislation to British possessions - in the past, it was not always explicit whether an Act was for the UK only, and this had to be deduced from context. In debate on the 1927 Act in the Commons, the Home Secretary Sir William Joynson-Hicks (as he then was) said: It is clear that it is a misnomer to continue to talk of &quot;The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.&quot; Quite obviously, since Southern Ireland has been granted Dominion Home Rule, there is no such thing as &quot;The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,&quot; but there is still &quot;The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.&quot; Consequently, after full consultation and interviews with the representatives of Northern Ireland, with the Government of Northern Ireland, it has been decided to ask the House to alter the title of Parliament- and to make it &quot;The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.&quot; and: Certain portions of Ireland have, as it were, slipped out of the United Kingdom, and we now call it the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but it is still the United Kingdom, and this is still the Thirty-fourth Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is clear that he - on behalf of the government - saw the Act as sufficient to change anything already defined in statute which needed to be changed. (It was also debated whether the Great Seal needed to be renamed as well, etc.) The change to the name of the country did not need statutory authorization in contexts where the old name was not required by statute. Diplomatic formulae are not statutory and so aren't mentioned here; the royal prerogative is already enough for the treaty language to be as envisaged going forward. British passports also changed in 1927 to using &quot;United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland&quot; in place of &quot;and Ireland&quot;. At the time, passport issuing was entirely on the basis of the royal prerogative, without any legislative regime. Various other official publications, like statistical reports, used the new name going forward. Some other provisions in the Declaration were given effect in the Statute of Westminster 1931. This should be seen as part of a continuing effort to let the legal situation follow the policy (Commonwealth nations are equal autonomous peers) which itself followed the facts on the ground (the UK government could no longer expect to rule them directly). So there was not precisely a &quot;flag day&quot; when the UK's name changed, but there was a process of recognizing that the name ought to change, some wrangling over how, and the fairly rapid implementation of the change in 1927, at least on the part of the UK government itself.
There is no internationally-enforceable mechanism regarding how other people call something, or what alphabet can be uses to write a word. I can legally call that country between Bangladesh and Thailand "Burma" or "Myanmar", I can call Україна Ukraine, The Ukraine, or Ukrainia (the latter seems to be old-fashioned, but it's still legal). As a diplomatic matter, the US government seems to have settled on certain designations so that it uses the version "Myanmar" for official purposes although it includes "(Burma)" in popular communications (State Department travel advisories). If it wanted to, the US could call The Republic of North Macedonia by the name "Macedonia", though there would be political protests. The EU, NATO, UN etc. can likewise set its own rules regarding names of countries. There are many additional complications in the case of countries that are not universally / widely recognized, such as Trasnistria and the Republic of Somaliland. If the president of the Republic of Somaliland sought to address the UN, his problem would not be what people would call his country, it is that the Republic of Somaliland is not "recognized" by the UN (it has no official status), or anyone else. The question of "sameness" of language is a prominent feature of nationalist movements. Claims are made that Flemish and Dutch are "the same" or "different", likewise Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, Montenegrin; Dari, Farsi and Tajik. Thus there is no real chance of litigating the matter of whether Moldovan and Romanian are the "same language" and which name should be used. But if the EU parliament wants to, it could rule that the language of Moldova is to be called "Romanian", or "Moldovan".
You have asked about "United Kingdom", but I can only answer about England and Wales; the law in Scotland is very different (rather more different in some respects than the difference between E&amp;W and the State of New York). There is no time limit per se on manslaughter charges; if the police find evidence for a manslaughter charge after 80 years, there is no difficulty (in principle) in bringing a charge against the now-centenarian (provided they are competent to stand trial, and they can get a fair trial, and so on). However, in the case you mentioned I would have thought the major problem would be a defence of autrefois convict - in other words, the defendant can (usually) only be charged once with charges arising from a particular set of facts. It is just possible that the subsequent death constitutes a new fact which allows a new prosecution. On the other hand, the rule for murder used to be that if the victim survived a year and a day then it wasn't murder (even if they then died of their injuries). Finally, the case certainly would not be reopened with a charge of manslaughter. It would be "causing death by dangerous driving", which is a very different offence. Edit My thanks to ohwilleke whose comment about the "year and a day" rule prompted me to do a little research, and discover the Law Reform (Year and a Day Rule) Act 1996. Section 2(2) clearly covers the present case (in both legs), and says that the perpetrator can be re-prosecuted, but only with the permission of the Attorney General. The act is very brief, and I encourage you to read it all. (And incidentally, does not apply to Scotland.)
You are deeply confused, probably by the blogs of a conspiracy theorist (perhaps discussing the Sovereign Citizen Movement mentioned in the comments), whom it would be helpful for you to reference. In fact, people with and without lawyers claim common law rights in the ordinary courts of the UK every day, in the lion's share of civil lawsuits. For example: There is a common law right to sue for damages when someone breaches a contract by not paying a bill that they owe. A defendant, meanwhile, has a common law right to defend against such a suit on grounds, for example, that the debt has been paid or that the debt is not owed because there was no agreement to pay in the first place. The substantive right of an owner of real property to evict a tenant who breaches a lease arises at common law, even though statutes spell out the process for enforcing that right. Furthermore, the way that ownership of real property is established (i.e. through a chain of title involving purchases by deeds) likewise arises at common law. The defendant meanwhile has a common law defense to a claim for rent for the remainder of the period in a lease after an eviction for failure of the landlord to mitigate damages if the landlord does not make a reasonable effort to find a new tenant. The right to sue someone who negligently caused an accident that injured you is a common law right.
See Article VI of the Constitution: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. This seems to me that it pretty clearly establishes the Constitution as taking the place of any previous laws. In particular, Article XI of the Articles is in conflict with Article IV Section 3 of the Constitution ("New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union"). The Constitution says that Congress's action is required to create a new state, and doesn't mention any exceptions. The Constitution's terms presumably take precedence. If Canada wanted to become a state, it would have to be admitted by Congress under Article IV Section 3.
If you are charged under the laws of Estonia (or Australia or Thailand or the UK) then the laws of the USA have no relevance whatsoever. It makes no difference if you are a US citizen, if the alleged crime happened in the USA or was perpetrated against the USA. If nation X has jurisdiction then you are tried under the laws of nation X. That is what sovereignty means. As to your specific example, Facebook does business in Estonia, therefore they are subject to Estonian law, as a US corporation they are also subject to US law and the law of every other jurisdiction they operate in (see why they need big legal departments?). If a legitimate Estonian warrant was served on them to disclose metadata or anything else then they are legally obliged to do so or be in contempt of court. Oh, and by the way, the first amendment right to free speech does not give you a right to anonymous free speech.