Devolved primary legislation and the gaze of the common law: a view from Northern Ireland

On 19 February 2020, the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal handed down judgment in Hughes v Charity Commission for Northern Ireland. On its face a decision about the delegation of statutory powers, beneath its surface lies a wealth of constitutional principle, revealing how the rule of law interacted with and gave effect to an Act of the Northern Ireland Assembly. By exploring this interaction in this article, I attempt to build a conceptual foundation to answer a question left largely unanswered by UK courts: how should the rule of law review the legality of devolved primary legislation?