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Revolutionary changes Building the UK's New Supreme Court: National and Comparative Perspectives, edited by Andrew Le Sueur. Oxford University Press. 2004. 376 pages. $90.
For a system that revels in tradition, iakes only the smallest incremental changes, and thinks modernizing is a dirty word, the changes in the judiciaries of the United Kingdom in the last 10 years have been nothing short of revolutionary. Devolving powers to Scotland, Northern Ireland (where the Assembly is currently suspended), and to a lesser extent, Wales, has made those jurisdictions the vanguard of electing women legislators, instituting judicial nominating commissions, and attempting to operationalize the concept of a representative judiciary.
Clearly on the agenda for a new supreme court in the United Kingdom is the constitutional issue of determining the relationship of the parts to the whole. How will Scotland's independent civil law system fit into a system of appeals, formerly the purview of the Privy Council? Should a judge from Northern Ireland have a guaranteed seat on the House of Lords? Passage of the Human Rights Act of 1998 has brought into sharper focus the relationship with the U.K. as part of international and supranational institutions and the judicial systems they created, the Council of Europe (European Court of Human Rights) and European Union (European Court of Justice), respectively.