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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Since the creation of the UKSC, both NI justices have been CA/LCJNI. Though the first NI Law Lord was appointed from the HC, and returned as LCJNI afterwards. The selection panel for the future NI seat includes a LJ but not the LCJNI, which might foreshadow its next occupant.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The Industrial Accelerator Act - aka the "Made in Europe scheme" - will apply to Northern Ireland via the Windsor Framework unless the Stormont brake is successfully triggered. BBC News - Healey to ask EU finance ministers to let UK into Made in Europe scheme www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

John Healey to ask EU finance ministers to let UK into Made in Europe scheme

The chancellor wants the Made in Europe programme to deepen ties with the UK "rather than erecting new barriers".

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

"Polyamory - the Brussels way"

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Reposted by Anurag Deb

Colin Murray @colinmurray.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Months of work on FWS & the problem of making it fit with NI law alongside @sylviademars.me and @aoifemod.bsky.social is finally ready to see daylight. Short answer, it doesn't fit. Yes, the situation is so serious that it warranted the Mean Girls quote in the title. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

papers.ssrn.com

'She Doesn't Even Go Here!': For Women Scotland and Northern Ireland Law

The UK Supreme Court's For Women Scotland (FWS) decision has caused considerable and controversial impact upon equality law's protections for trans people in Gr

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Also, on a personal note: I was fortunate to have worked on a series of cases with Fiona Doherty as senior counsel (for and against). Hers is a richly deserved and excellent addition to the bench in general. Definitely one to watch.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Out of a sanctioned strength of 10, the NI High Court now has 3 women (Smyth, M Smyth and Doherty JJ). This takes the total number of women in the NI senior judiciary to 5 (including Keegan LCJ and McBride LJ), out of 14 total judges in the higher courts. barofni.com/news-events/...

barofni.com

Congratulations to Fiona Doherty KC and Moira Smyth KC

The Chair of the Bar Council Denise Kiley KC has extended her congratulations to Fiona Doherty KC and Moira Smyth KC who were sworn into office as High…

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

An archival deep dive would be useful. Particularly at and the few centuries after the Conquest.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Some of these solutions would also find themselves onto the Scottish and Welsh settlements. But the political issue of how devolved and central governments approach the scope of devolved competence has remained, in every area, including crime. 8/8

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Stormont's modern 3 list settlement was part of the solution envisaged for the new devolution framework when the 1920 Act settlement collapsed at the start of the Troubles. Other solutions included immunising devolved statutes which only incidentally touched on reserved matters. 7/

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

This clarifying Act was part of a broader pattern: Stormont would encounter a problem of rigid competence boundaries, ask WM for a legislative solution & WM would do what was only strictly required and no more. A series of such Acts had to be enacted every few years between the 1920s and 1950s. 6/

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The solution was for WM to enact a very tiny clarification in Stormont's competence: that nothing in the Government of Ireland Act prevented Stormont from reforming indictments across all offences. 5/

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Now, Stormont simply wanted to reform the NI indictment system to mirror the reforms already enacted in E&W. But E&W reforms were restricted to E&W. The same did not extend to NI. 4/

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

When Stormont embarked on reforming the form of criminal indictments in the 1940s, it couldn't touch reserved offences. This would have forced a 2 indictment system: one for devolved offences like theft, and another for reserved offences like treason. 3/

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, there was a strict reserved/devolved binary (unlike today when there are 3 lists). Criminal procedure over devolved offences was devolved by implication, but barred (again, by implication) over reserved offences 2/

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The complexities of the reserved/devolved binary in criminal law, procedure and administration (because the straddle this binary) have a long and interesting history. In the 1940s, NI faced the opposite problem to the Scottish example here. 1/

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

6 years, 100s of sources and at least a dozen stupefying dead-ends later:

Thesis title page: The Birth of Laws: Legislative Drafting as Ethical Translation

Meme of Frodo at Mount Doom: "It's done. Until the viva"

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

In his wider piece in Current Legal Problems (linked in the post below) @bymyong.bsky.social makes the (imv, excellent and irrefutable) argument that there is an epistemic problem with understanding the executive *primarily* through external legal constraints. Carltona is part of this problem.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Respectfully, I'm not entirely convinced by public criticism, or other in-group mechanism, as the remedy for failure. They could be, in a world where academics had both the time and the resources to devote to these and everything else. As it is, peer review itself strains under similar pressures.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

What happens when peer review fails? As it sometimes does, because of a range of reasons.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

This millennial would just like to qualify the last line: "And went to work *hoping* nothing would happen, only to spend most of the day praying for the shift to end, fighting the urge to puke and inevitably having to do so sneakily (+ also failing to be sneaky)." Ah, what a time 🥹

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

This goes for signing open letters, too 😊

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

You're very kind Rob. But you haven't seen my contempt for legislative intent 😅

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

A lot of opinion-havers, including academics, could benefit from the general civil/public service restrictions on public speech. Do you have an opinion? Think 10 times about posting it. And then don't 😊

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Repurposing archival material (which didn't make it to my thesis) for a work briefing (where it unexpectedly makes total sense) so that I can justify doing a PhD 😂

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I believe that's how the mosquito repellent began - in Japan, coiled to increase its longevity. It's just hilarious to see it being translated by a luxury house when you can get fragranced varieties for a tiny fraction of the vastly increased cost.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

After the fiasco with Prada and the definititely-not-inspired-by-the-Kolhapuri-chappal, Diptyque has gentrified a 40p mosquito repellent 😭 www.independent.co.uk/life-style/d...

A coiled "scented spiral" called Citronnelle Incense, on a gold stand, from Diptyque.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

20. A clear and accessible structure and clear signposting. Nice prose helps. Especially in philosophical texts, accessibility matters a great deal. It's easy to get lost in dense terminology.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

19. This is probably a v tired take but Dicey's Intro. In 2026, I know there are way more nuanced and engaging academic texts on the UK constitution. Dicey was of his time. Please let his ghost rest.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

18. Unrelated to my PhD, but related to other academic work: constitutional law texts written in the 1920s and 1930s by scholars like Arthur Berriedale Keith and Nicholas Mansergh that leaned pretty heavily into comparative constitutional studies across the changing face of the British empire.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

17. I haven't read any children's books in the last 6 years, but I loved The Chronicles of Narnia and Tolkien's entire corpus as a child. When I was a little older (maybe 13?) I discovered Robin Hobb. One of the best fantasy writers I've ever read.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

16. I've read (and re-read) probably around 6-7 so far books this year? All academic, bar two: The City and the Stars (Arthur C Clarke) and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (Arundhati Roy).

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

The most fun I've had reading for my PhD is in reading biographies/ethnographic pieces. Or in archived letters and memos that their authors never dreamt would one day be publicly available.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Yeah I agree with your "tool not ornament" point, I think for me it's a personal choice around my own books. Dog-ear and mark your own however you please, they're yours.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

15. I read an academic text recently and plan to submit a review of it (post-thesis). Without giving anything away, it was a very timely read: a series of lessons on how not to write my thesis, inferred from the way the author *wrote* their book. However, not the worst academic piece I've ever read.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

14. Marking/dog-earing books: Absolutely not! Get/make a bookmark, even if it's a receipt in your pocket. It's a pet peeve of mine to lend books and get them back dog-eared.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

13. No Goodreads, but I do critically engage with (emphasis on the 'critical' 😊) much of the literature I've already set out. So that's *my* Goodreads. It may not entice you to read anyone I've mentioned so far but my god does it make a lovely cure for insomnia.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

12A: in terms of compulsory academic reading for the PhD: none as such. But there were obvious candidates in legal philosophy who provided a solid grounding and who are/should be part of any legal philosophy reading list: Hart, Dworkin, Raz, Tamanaha, Bix and @paolosandro.bsky.social

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

12. The 2 school reads that clearly come to mind: Julius Caesar, because we performed it (I was Marc Antony). And: The God of Small Things. This wasn't a school-mandated read. One of our neighbours in Calcutta (a librarian) recommended it to me at 14. Too young to have read it, but it is beautiful.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

11. Seeing as almost my entire reading list has been non-fiction for the past 6 years, here's a rare work of fiction I read and really liked: The City and the Stars by Arthur C Clarke. The story was maybe a little rushed in the final act, but still a wonderfully written piece about human curiosity.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

10. No guilty faves. The only guilt in a PhD is the existential dread that comes with every second of doing one 😊

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

9. I keep coming back to a certain passage by Oerton, on parliamentary counsel: "They are, taking them by and large, the rudest, most arrogant, most vain and most self-satisfied group of people inside (and, so far as I know, outside) the Civil Service." Makes me remember who I'm writing about 😂

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

8. Harold Kent, In on the Act. Kent as parliamentary counsel was a contemporary of Maurice Gwyer, British India's first Chief Justice. Kent's memoirs are fascinating (but yielded little in terms of what I was interested in).

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

7. This is what eventually got me thinking of how legislative drafting works: share.google/LtN93LumQahy... (Don't ask me how I got from @dkennytcd.bsky.social & @eoinmauricedaly.bsky.social to Jacques Derrida. I'm still trying to figure that out.)

share.google

Government blocking of legislation is constitutionally dubious

Liberal use of money message mechanism has makings of democratic crisis

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

6. Of Grammatology. What else 🥲

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

5. Online (unavoidably paying certain billionaires) because the very few books I've had to buy have been long out of print (see civil servant autobiographies).

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

4. Not a bookstore, but my most frequently visited library sections have been: public law, governance and philosophy.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

3. Civil servant autobiographies of a certain period. Regurgitating the pettiest grievances of a decades-long career through knife-sharp humour. More please.

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Anurag Deb @anuragdeb.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Greenberg's and Oerton's books were both no-holds-barred in the best ways. Oerton's was as caustic of parliamentary counsel as Greenberg's was of the people who instructed counsel.

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