2019 British prorogation controversy

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On 28 August 2019, the Parliament of the United Kingdom was ordered to be prorogued by Queen Elizabeth II on the advice of the Conservative prime minister, Boris Johnson – this advice was later ruled unlawful. The prorogation, or suspension, of Parliament was to be effective from some point between 9 and 12 September 2019 and would last until the State Opening of Parliament on 14 October 2019. As a consequence, Parliament was suspended between 10 September and 24 September 2019. Since Parliament was to be prorogued for five weeks and reconvene just 17 days before the United Kingdom's scheduled departure from the European Union on 31 October 2019, the move was seen by many opposition politicians and political commentators as a controversial and unconstitutional attempt by the prime minister to avoid parliamentary scrutiny of the Government's Brexit plans in the final weeks leading up to Brexit. Johnson and his Government defended the prorogation of Parliament as a routine political process that ordinarily follows the selection of a new prime minister and would allow the Government to refocus on a legislative agenda.

In early September 2019, judges in the High Court of Justice and the Outer House of the Court of Session (the English and Scottish civil courts of first instance) ruled that the matter was not subject to judicial review as it was a political decision. An appeal in the latter case to the Inner House of the Court of Session (Scotland's supreme civil court) overturned the Outer House verdict and ruled the prorogation was justiciable and unlawful. To resolve the differences of opinion between the courts, both cases were appealed to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom which, on 24 September, ruled unanimously in R (Miller) v The Prime Minister and Cherry v Advocate General for Scotland that the prorogation was both justiciable and unlawful – consequently, the Order in Council ordering prorogation was quashed, and the prorogation was deemed "null and of no [legal] effect".^[1] When Parliament resumed on the following day, the prorogation ceremony was expunged from the Journal of the House of Commons and business continued as if the ceremony had never happened. A second much shorter prorogation, this time for six days, began on 8 October.