Scotfax

THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND ARE SOVEREIGN🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿💙 The principle that "the people of Scotland are sovereign" is a distinctive constitutional concept in Scottish political and legal tradition, contrasting with the 'top-down' English constitutional principle of parliamentary sovereignty. This idea has deep roots in Scottish history, most famously articulated in the Declaration of Arbroath (1320), which asserted that Scottish kings and queens ruled with the consent of the Community of the Realm and that the people had the right to remove any monarch who failed to defend Scotland's independence. This was a remarkably early statement of popular sovereignty. The concept was re-stated in the Claim of Right 1689, a pioneering and astonishingly inclusive statement of human rights that was not only used to remove the Scots king, James VII, but the principles of which found their way into the US Bill of Rights a century later. The Claim of Right is a foundational document of the UK Constitution and the bedrock of Scots law, and remains of immense power and importance today. It gained renewed prominence during the Scottish constitutional debates of the late 20th century. The Claim of Right 1989 reasserted that "the Union of 1707 was contrary to the laws, traditions and wishes of the Scottish people" and that "we, gathered as the Scottish Constitutional Convention, acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs." This principle influenced the devolution process leading to the creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. Popular sovereignty is a powerful political principle in Scotland. The UK's legal framework is operated exclusively under parliamentary sovereignty (the Westminster Parliament's supremacy) and is increasingly seen to clash with the Claim of Right's foundational principles. The 2016 Brexit referendum is one such spectacular conflict, when Scotland voted to remain in the EU but was bound by Westminster to the English result.