Class 2/26

Hi everyone,

You can find the presentation slides from today here.
Good luck with your midterm!

Best,
Barbara

Class notes 2/19/2016

Hello everyone,

The class notes from yesterday can be found here .
Moreover, just to keep you up to date with the British referendum, David Cameron has negotiated a new membership deal with the EU and his cabinet has formally agreed to campaign to stay in (despite several minister openly supporting Brexit). The date of the referendum has been confirmed for June 23rd.

If you're interested in learning more, here is a video with Cameron's address of the nation from today. Moreover, if you wish even more details into the situation, this article is relatively insightful. 
Regarding the renegotiation:

"The agreement in Brussels was done after a marathon round of talks over two days, concluding shortly after 9pm on Friday.

After the summit, the prime minister insisted he had strengthened his key demands since the European council president, Donald Tusk, outlined his draft agreement on 2 February. The key changes will mean that:

• -A proposed “emergency brake” on EU migrants claiming in-work benefits will last for seven years. It will cover individuals for no more than four years, but the UK will be allowed to apply the overall restrictions for seven years.
• -Restrictions on child benefit for EU migrants will kick in at a reduced rate – indexed to the rate of a migrant’s home country – for new migrants with immediate effect. Existing EU migrants will be paid at the lower rate from 2020. Eastern European countries had hoped that existing migrants would be exempt.
• -Britain has a specific opt-out from the EU’s historic commitment to forge an “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe”.
• -One country – in effect Britain – will have the right to impose a handbrake to refer contentious financial regulation to a meeting of EU leaders in the European council."

Have a good weekend!

Class notes 2/12/2016

Hi everyone,

You will find the class presentation from today here. 
As I have mentioned in class, the last slide contains a midterm question from last year. Please prepare your answer for the next week's class such that we can start our discussion with the question. In case you cannot open the link, the question is:

Some of the factors that shape how voters make their choices vary in importance from election to election.  Why do the party ideological promises (left-right issues) vary in relative importance in shaping voter’s choices between different elections?  Why was this factor relatively less important in Britain in 2010 than in, for example, 1983?

Also, Maria mentioned in class the mechanism for petition submission in the UK. If your petition reaches 100,000 signatures it gets debated in the Parliament. For example, the "Block Donald J Trump from UK entry" got 578,893 and got debated. You can read the government response and watch the debate here.

Class notes 2/5/2016 UK

Hi everyone,

Class notes from today can be found here.

Other clarifying notes:

On the relationship between UK and EU law:

Parliamentary sovereignty means that Parliament is the supreme law-making body: its Acts are the highest source of English law. According to the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, Parliament may pass any legislation that it wishes. Historically, "No Act of Parliament can be unconstitutional, for the law of the land knows not the word or the idea."

EU law is enforceable only on the basis of an Act of Parliament. It is simply a subcategory of international law that depends for its effect on a series of international treaties (notably the Treaty of Rome and the Maastricht Treaty). It therefore has effect in the UK only to the extent that Parliament permits it to have effect, by means of statutes such as the European Communities Act 1972, and Parliament could, as a matter of British law, unilaterally bar the application of EU law in the UK simply by legislating to that effect.

On the House of Lords:

-appointment: Members of the House of Lords are appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister. 

-payroll: They can opt to receive a £300 per day attendance allowance, plus travel expenses and subsidised restaurant facilities. Peers may also choose to receive a reduced attendance allowance of £150 per day instead.

-hereditary members: The membership of the House of Lords is made up of Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal. The Lords Spiritual are 26 bishops in the established Church of England. Of the Lords Temporal, the majority are life peers (appointed). However, they also include some hereditary peers including four dukes (total of hereditary peers limited to 92 out of currently sitting 820 Lords)

EU referendum: What does every European leader think about Britain's demands?

Hi everyone,

We have our first blog submission: "EU referendum: What does every European leader think about Britain's demands?" 
What is really nice about this piece is that as opposed to the Economist article it shows what do European countries stand to lose or gain from "Brexit" and what are their leaders' opinions on the reforms proposed by Cameron.