Lord Sumption, a former Supreme Court judge, told BBC Radio Scotland he hoped the court would give the referendum case a “high degree of expedition and that it could be decided this autumn” as it clearly could not be allowed. which lengthens so much. longer “.
He said: “The Scottish Government’s main difficulty is that Scotland’s constitutional relations with the rest of the UK are a private matter, which means the Scottish Parliament has no power to legislate on this.”
He predicted that Mrs Sturgeon would argue that it was just a ‘consultative’ referendum which would not in itself change the relationship between Scotland and the UK.
But he cited a recent Supreme Court ruling that the SNP had exceeded its powers by trying to enshrine treaties on the rights of children and local government in Scottish law.
He said: “The difficulty is that the Supreme Court ruled last October that if a matter was reserved, this simply did not mean that the Scottish Parliament could not legislate directly on this, but it also meant that they could not legislate on a way that he intended to put pressure on the UK authorities on a reserved matter.
“I suspect this will probably be the main difficulty on the way to Mrs Sturgeon’s application.”