Prerogative Power

The Law is an ass, well a complicated and convoluted ass, a wordy ass, an ass that is fed on statues and common law, on decisions reached in the past, dealing with similar issues, decisions which when reached become another brick in the legalistic edifice which we rely on to frame our legal practice, and in essence the justice we cherish.

At the moment the barrister leading the Governments case is pleading with the High Court that the Government can make decisions using its Prerogative Powers to start the Article 50 Brexit exit. Prerogative Power is a concept of legal precedent which dates back into antiquity when the King made all decisions and which filtered into the early days of Parliament where the Royal Prerogative became a way of passing law onto the statute book bypassing the need to gain the consent of parliament as a whole.
Because we have no written constitution the law is made on the hoof with decisions reached by considering decisions made in other courts which then became part of common law, itself the basis of all legal judgement.
Statutory Legislation concerns "legislative acts" which pass through parliament, and, after debate and a vote, become wholly the business of Parliament and not the Prerogative of government.
Statutory Legislation in 1973 secured our passage into the EU, and it is this legislation that is being in effect challenged by government through a Royal Prerogative.
The people who brought the application to the High Court today challenge the legality of using the Prerogative powers to overturn an act which originally saw life in Parliament and which they argue is the job of Parliament to overturn.
I must be a wonk because I love the arcane argument and the delicate judgement based on interpretation and language. It's the intellect working at 110% and just listening makes you up your game as you try to follow the logic of what is being argued.
I have been to the Old Bailey to sit in the public gallery and listen to Applicants who have brought a hearing to the Appeal Court when their cases, having been tried in a junior court, feel that they have been unfairly judged. The barrister leads his case and three judges listen and question the points made. The thrust of legal opinion is quite cutting between these "high minds" and their Lordships can be damming towards the QC who is poorly prepared. In some ways it's theatre, a contest of words and meaning set in the arcane setting of a court room where no allowance is made for misinterpretation. At this level no accommodation can creep in to the affair, the finite meaning is all that can be allowed, dotting the 'i' and crossing the 't' is the life long business of these people and, like jockeys in the final 100yds, the whips are out and no holds barred.
Of course the issue won't make any difference to the triggering of Article 50 but it will ask much more of the Government since it will have to present a case to Parliament covering not just the motion to trigger Article 50 but the much more thorny issue of when triggered what the Article means to the economy and the standard of living of the people living here. Speculation which has been smothered in conjecture and hidden away for another day.
For the legal eagles it means even more as they feather their nests on the minutia of constitutional law. For them "form" means more than "substance" they have squirrelled enough substance to get them through many a winter. Much more important is the procedure and president of law, unearthing the meaning which lies behind any or all of man's historical acts and interpreting them in today's world, which I would contend is nearly an impossible act.