Intervention at the UK Supreme Court

Abstract

This article examines the role of interveners before the UK Supreme Court. Interveners are persons who, while neither appellant nor respondent, participate in the litigation process and make submissions to the court in much the same way that either of those parties would. Interveners assist judicial decision-making by providing supplemental information that gives a broader economic and social context to the legal issues in dispute. Through a comparative study of the experience of intervention at the supreme courts of theUnited States andCanada, this article seeks to provide insights as to how the practice of intervention might develop at the UK SupremeCourt in the years to come. It also identifies a number of issues to lay a foundation for further scholarly study in the field. In the first section, intervention is placed in a comparative context by looking to the supreme courts of the United States and Canada. The second section provides an overview of the purpose and procedure of intervention at the UK Supreme Court. In the third section, a numerical analysis of intervention at the UK Supreme Court since it began hearing cases in 2009 (with reference to the House of Lords since 2005) identifies trends that may suggest future developments. The conclusion sets out that intervention before the UK Supreme Court offers a number of benefits if the process is carefully regulated.