David Burrows breaks a self-imposed ordinance
When the French revolutionary National Constituent Assembly dissolved itself in 1791 it decreed a self-denying ordinance, that none of its members could sit in its successor body, the Legislative Assembly: a representative who had passed a constitutional law reform could not be its interpreter.
In R (Cart & Ors) v The Upper Tribunal & Ors [2009] EWHC 3052 (Admin), [2010] 1 All ER 908 Laws LJ makes a similar point (concerning the challenge of the finality of an Upper Tribunal decision): “The interpreter [of a statutory provision cannot generally be] the public body which has to administer the relevant law: for in that case the decision-makers would write their own laws. The interpreter must be impartial, independent both of the legislature and of the persons affected by the texts’ application, and authoritative—accepted as the last word, subject only to any appeal. Only a court can fulfil the role.”
The decision-maker must self-deny a role as “interpreter”, as distinct from enforcer, of a statute under which that decision-maker operates. My own self-denying ordinance is to avoid comment on cases
