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Tacticians, Stewards, and Professionals: The Politics of Publishing Select Committee Legal Advice

Yong, Ben; Davies, Greg; Leston‐Bandeira, Cristina

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Authors

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Dr Ben Yong benjamin.y.yong@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor

Greg Davies

Cristina Leston‐Bandeira



Abstract

At Westminster, there are increasing pressures on select committees to publish in‐house legal advice. We suggest that examining the process of deciding to publish provides useful insights into the provision, reception, and use of legal advice, and the dynamics of select committees generally. We argue that the autonomy of select committees to decide what use they make of evidence and advice they receive is, in practice, constrained by the intra‐institutional dynamics and practices of select committees. Committee actors – parliamentarians, clerks, and parliamentary lawyers – each have overlapping, sometimes competing, roles. Most of the time, these roles and the responsibilities they encompass coincide, but the prospect of publication reveals clear tensions between the different actors. This is the politics of publication: the tactical approach of politicians is in tension with the stewardship of clerks and the professional norms of parliamentary lawyers. We suggest this tension will only increase in the near future.

Citation

Yong, B., Davies, G., & Leston‐Bandeira, C. (2019). Tacticians, Stewards, and Professionals: The Politics of Publishing Select Committee Legal Advice. Journal of Law and Society, 46(3), 367-395. https://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12153

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 11, 2019
Online Publication Date Apr 10, 2019
Publication Date Sep 30, 2019
Deposit Date Oct 12, 2019
Publicly Available Date Oct 14, 2019
Journal Journal of Law and Society
Print ISSN 0263-323X
Electronic ISSN 1467-6478
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 46
Issue 3
Pages 367-395
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12153
Related Public URLs https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/1371633

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distributionand reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © The Authors. Journal of Law and Society published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Cardiff University (CU)





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