LONDON — Britain’s highest court dealt a serious blow Tuesday to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, ruling that his controversial decision to suspend Parliament was unlawful, in a landmark judgment that will have immediate implications for Britain’s departure from the European Union.
In one of the most high-profile cases to come before Britain’s Supreme Court, the 11 judges ruled unanimously that Johnson had attempted to stymie Parliament at a crucial moment in British history.
The court ruled that Johnson’s decision to ask Queen Elizabeth II to suspend Parliament frustrated the ability of lawmakers to do the business of democracy, including debating Johnson’s plans for leaving the E.U. The new prime minister has vowed that the departure, known as Brexit, will occur — “do or die” — by the end of October.
The court’s judgment was a brutal one for the embattled prime minister. The justices asserted that his move to suspend Parliament was a political maneuver and strongly suggested that he might have misled the queen.
Johnson, who is in New York for the U.N. General Assembly session, said he will not resign.
Brenda Hale, president of the Supreme Court, eviscerated the government’s case.
Sitting in the high court, avoiding legal language and speaking clearly to the country, Hale said that Johnson’s decision to suspend 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 court unanimously found that Johnson’s suspension was “void and of no effect,” meaning, essentially, that Parliament has not been suspended.
John Bercow, the flamboyant speaker of the House of Commons, called the high court’s decision “unambiguous” and “unqualified” and said Parliament would resume its duties Wednesday morning.
Lawmakers in the House of Commons will be allowed to ask “urgent questions” of Johnson’s ministers and take part in “emergency debates” Wednesday, Bercow said, foreshadowing a freewheeling session for the chamber to press the government on all fronts.
Some lawmakers were already discussing a no-confidence measure against Johnson in Parliament, where the prime minister already has lost his majority.
“This is an absolutely momentous decision,” said Joanna Cherry, a Scottish politician who helped to launch the case in the Scottish courts.
Speaking immediately after the bombshell decision, Cherry said Johnson and his top aides, who had designed the suspension strategy, “were not nearly as clever as they think they are.”
She also called on Johnson to step down. “The highest court in the United Kingdom has unanimously found that his advice to prorogue this Parliament, his advice given to Her Majesty the Queen, was unlawful. His position is untenable. He should have the guts for once to do the decent thing and resign,” she said.
Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, said the court’s decision demonstrates Johnson’s “contempt for democracy and abuse of power.”
Corbyn said he hoped to make Johnson the shortest-serving prime minister in British history.
The Supreme Court ruling left Johnson with no cover. His move to suspend Parliament for so long was a bold and unprecedented one — and it backfired in spectacular fashion.
“I’m literally speechless,” said Joelle Grogan, a senior lecturer in law at Middlesex University. She said she was watching the judgment in a room full of academics, who were stunned by the decision. “It’s the rewriting of an unwritten constitution,” she said.
Johnson is scheduled to address the U.N. General Assembly and to meet with President Trump on Tuesday. Opposition leaders in London said Johnson should return to Britain immediately.
Two hours after the high court ruling, neither Johnson nor the government spokesman had appeared on camera to respond to the morning’s blockbuster news.
The ruling followed a three-day hearing last week at the highest court, which was hastily convened to weigh contrasting judgments from English and Scottish courts on Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament until mid-October.
The high-profile legal case concerns Johnson’s decision to ask Queen Elizabeth II to suspend Parliament from Sept. 10 to Oct. 14, which the prime minister said was needed to introduce his “exciting” new legislative agenda. The queen agreed with the advice of her prime minister, as is customary. But such a suspension traditionally last just four to six days.
Johnson’s critics said that his break — at five weeks, the longest since 1945 — was an attempt to thwart lawmakers’ ability to scrutinize the government’s Brexit plans ahead of Britain’s scheduled departure from the bloc on Oct. 31.
[PM vs. PM: John Major argues against Boris Johnson in U.K. Supreme Court case]
Ahead of Tuesday’s ruling, Johnson told the Daily Telegraph on Monday that he would not resign if the court ruled against him, insisting that he was correct to suspend Parliament so the government could focus on its domestic agenda. “It is absolutely absurd to be totally fixated on Brexit,” he said.
Johnson also threw in a bit of French at one point, one of his rhetorical gimmicks, to say that people should give him a break.
“Donnez-moi un break, is my message to those who say there will be no parliamentary scrutiny. It is absolute nonsense,” he said.
In court last week, the government’s lawyers said they would abide by the Supreme Court’s ruling, but they did not rule out suspending Parliament for a second time. Such a move now seems less likely.
Last week, 11 justices on the Supreme Court listened to appeals from two cases with contrasting judgments. A Scottish court found that Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament was unlawful “because it had the purpose of stymying Parliament” ahead of Brexit. An English court dismissed a similar case, saying it was political and not a matter for the courts.
In court last week, lawyers for the government echoed the English court’s arguments, while lawyers for the claimants posited that the executive should not have unfettered power.
Anti-Brexit supporters gather in the rain outside the Supreme Court in London, Sept. 24, 2019. (Frank Augstein/AP)
In one of the more surreal moments, a former Conservative prime minister criticized the current Conservative prime minister over his motives for suspending Parliament. In a written submission, John Major, a pro-European who was prime minister from 1990 to 1997, accused Johnson of being motivated by “political interest.”
The case was unusual on many fronts, not least because it tested the limits of Britain’s largely uncodified constitution. It is normal for a prime minister to suspend Parliament, but the break is usually measured in days, not weeks.
“The truth of Brexit is that it’s exposing questions to the courts that they’ve never been exposed to before,” said Grogan, the Middlesex University lecturer. “We’re now asking them basic questions: What is Parliament? What is government? What is the separation between the two . . . and when there is a clash of law and politics, who gets to make the big decisions?”
She said before the ruling that the courts were “navigating strange constitutional waters, with no map.”
[David Cameron says queen agreed to intervene in British politics]
Grogan said that one of the remarkable aspects of the case has been the speed with which it was pulled together. Cases that come before the Supreme Court often take years to weave through the lower courts before they arrive at the highest court in the land, she said. Johnson announced he was suspending Parliament only at the end of August.
Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets with military personnel near Salisbury, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2019. (Ben Stansall/AP)
The majority of lawmakers in Parliament oppose leaving the European Union without a deal, which the government’s own analysis says could impact the supply of medicines and some fresh foods. A cross-party rebel alliance has passed a law that would mandate Johnson to seek a three-month delay if no deal is struck by Oct. 19. Johnson has staked his premiership on Britain leaving the bloc on Oct. 31.
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