Johnson said he would not breach the law but didn’t go into detail of how he would get around the vote in Parliament that requires him to ask the EU for an extension on Oct. 19 if he can’t reach a new agreement by then.
“I will uphold the constitution, I will obey the law, but we will come out on Oct. 31,” Johnson said.
The constitution will be at the center of the Supreme Court proceedings this week after Scottish judges ruled against Johnson’s suspension of Parliament. It was “an egregious case of a clear failure to comply with generally accepted standards of behavior of public authorities,” Judge Philip Brodie said in the ruling.
Lawyers for the government will argue that the Scottish court was wrong when it ruled that Johnson’s suspension - or prorogation - of Parliament, announced Aug. 28, was intended to stymie lawmakers’ scrutiny of Brexit and was therefore unlawful.
The 11 Supreme Court judges will also hear an appeal from a group who failed to convince judges in the English Courts that Johnson’s decision was an abuse of power. The hearings are scheduled to run until Thursday and the court may not rule until next week.
Justice Secretary Robert Buckland, who repeatedly defended judges as critics of the Scottish court ruling questioned their impartiality, said the “robust independence” of the judiciary must be respected whatever the outcome.
“We will examine the ruling very carefully and abide by the rule of law,” Buckland told the BBC on Tuesday. U.K. judges are “world class and world leading, and we must let them do their job.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.