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The Jewish Chronicle

David Pannick: the lawyer who makes challenging Brexit look easy

What you need to operate in the rarified upper echelons of the legal system is brainpower. And Lord Pannick has plenty of it

December 9, 2016 12:47
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ByJoshua Rozenberg, Joshua Rozenberg

2 min read

Tuesday afternoon in the Supreme Court was everything the newspapers could have hoped for. Remainers push Pannick button to slow Article 50, was the Times headline. A Pannick attack is a thing of zen-like beauty, wrote John Crace in the Guardian. 

The sketch-writers marvelled at the fluency with which Lord Pannick QC batted back questions from the 11 justices. Unlike some of the barristers on the government side, Pannick never seemed to lose his place and never seemed thrown by a question.

He was there to defend the unexpected victory he had won in a lower court for Gina Miller, the investment-fund manager who had challenged the government’s Brexit strategy.

Her case, as articulated by Pannick, was that ministers could not use their inherent, prerogative powers to launch the process that would take the UK out of the EU; only an Act of Parliament would do.