Preventing the overconcentration of power is a central component of Western constitutional thought. However, in the British constitution power is generally concentrated in representative legislatures. Although these legislatures generally possess legitimating characteristics that courts lack, we cannot assume that this balance will hold true for all time. This article argues that the common law judicial review jurisdiction contains a power to invalidate the Acts of representative legislatures in certain extreme, hypothetical situations. The seeds of this line of thought began with dicta from a minority in Jackson v Attorney General and similar claims have appeared in several other landmark cases, such as AXA Insurance v Lord Advocate and Moohan v Lord Advocate. Rather than something novel, the power to invalidate legislation is best understood as a natural outgrowth of the seeds of a theory of legislative legitimacy present in the common law that began in the late 20th century.

The decision of the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Commission and United Kingdom v. Kadi (No. 2) is important in several respects. First of all, it represents the first opportunity of the Grand Chamber to clarify the meaning of key passages in their landmark ruling in C-402/05 P and C-415/05 Yassin Abdullah Kadi v. Commission (No. 1) relating to terrorist asset-freezing measures pursuant to United Nations Security Council Measures. Second, it reasserts the CJEU's position that Regulations implementing United Nations Measures are not immune from the jurisdiction of the European judicature. This comment takes the view that the judgment takes an appropriate line between legal principle and pragmatism, but nonetheless important questions remain unanswered about the future of balancing security sensitive information with the rights of the defence and the right to effective judicial protection in EU law.

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The landmark House of Lords ruling in Home Secretary v AF (No. 3) [2009] UKHL 28 imposed a ‘core irreducible minimum’ of disclosure (the AF (No. 3) duty) to suspects challenging a control order in judicial review proceedings which necessitated a closed material procedure (CMP) for national security reasons. This chapter outlines the application and impact of that decision in respect of the many other types of proceedings which require a CMP in national security and related contexts. It argues that the judicial treatment of the duty has been inconsistent, meaning that the enhanced procedural protection offered by the AF (No. 3) duty is often not present when the circumstances faced by the litigant are the most serious.