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The Democratic Credentials of the UK's Legal Relationship with the EU post-Brexit
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

The Democratic Credentials of the UK's Legal Relationship with the EU post-Brexit

Leah Trueblood
Judicial Review, Vol.In Press(In Press)
01/10/2026

Abstract

Brexit, Referendums, Democracy

Arguments about democracy were central to the outcome of the 2016 Brexit referendum. Vote Leave’s objective of ‘taking back control’ was driven by democratic dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction operated in two directions: both the institutional structure of the EU, and the UK’s relationship with the EU, were argued to be democratically untenable. Among other features of the EU and its relationship with the UK, the primacy of EU law, the powers of the European Commission, and the remit of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) were held to be indefensibly undemocratic. The aim of this article is not to revisit the democratic case for, or against, the UK’s membership of the EU. The purpose of this article is instead to critically assess the democratic credentials of the UK’s post-Brexit legal relationship with the EU. This paper argues that the post-Brexit settlement resolves some, but not all, of the democratic concerns raised about EU membership. More importantly, however, the resolution of some of these concerns about democracy has come at the expense of creating others.

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