Discuss the extent to which (if at all) the traditional doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty has been affected by the UK’s membership of the European Union.

Parliamentary sovereignty is one of the fundamental principles of the British Constitution, which underpins the legal system and gives the Parliament power to legislate on any matter. Dicey encapsulated this pillar of the Constitution as ‘the right to make or unmake any law whatever…and…no person or body is recognized by the Law of England as having the right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament’.1 His concept was confirmed in Madzimbamuto v Lardner-Burke where Lord Reid remarked ‘It is often said that it would be unconstitutional for the UK Parliament to do certain things, meaning that the moral, political and other reasons against doing them are so strong that most people would regard it as highly improper if Parliament did these things. But that does not mean that it is beyond the power of Parliament to do such things. If Parliament chose to do any of them, the courts could not hold the Act of Parliament invalid.’ However, the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Community has markedly affected the traditional understanding of parliamentary sovereignty. It can now be argued that parliamentary supremacy no longer corresponds to the traditional Diceyan conception. Indeed, it may well be that the membership of the EU, along with developments in common law and the introduction of the Human Rights Act,2 have not just diminished but rather destroyed the supremacy of Parliament. 
The EC was established in 1957 by six countries who signed the Treaty of Rome. The states’ primary concern was to create a common market between the member states. This requires member states to give the law-making authority to the EC on a wide range of important economic policy issues. The United Kingdom joined the EC twice - in 1960 and 1967. New states could be admitted only with the consent of all member states and on both occasions, France rejected the accession of the United Kingdom. British opponents argued that such transfer of political power was undesirable and was constitutionally impossible for the UK to honour the obligations EC membership entailed, since it had always been assumed that Parliament was the only body in the British constitutional system which can make laws and the accession to the EC might impose limitations on this principle. This paper will examine the principle of parliamentary sovereignty central to the British constitution and whether it still exists in light of UK’s membership in the EU.