Decolonizing Britain in the 21st Century?: Chagos Islanders challenge the Crown, House of Lords, 30 June-3 July 2008
This article discusses the anthropological, legal, and political significance of a recent lawsuit before the House of Lords involving the people of the UK-controlled Chagos Archipelago, exiled during creation of the US military base on Diego Garcia. Building on a growing body of anthropological and historical literature about the people and the base, the article reviews the history leading up to the June hearing and describes its proceedings as part of the islander's four-decades-old movement to win a return to their homeland. On the one hand, it represents the closest the Chagossians have come to a return in nearly 40 years. On the other, the case holds implications for the right of return of other displaced peoples, the rights of indigenous peoples more broadly, the limits of government authority, the balance of power in British parliamentary democracy, and the deepening of democracy worldwide. The suit holds significance for anthropologists studying indigenous peoples, displacement and migration, human rights, the law, government officials, and foreign policy.
An Imperfect Legacy: The Significance of the Bancoult Litigation on the Development of Domestic Constitutional Jurisprudence
This essay will explore the constitutional significance of the decisions in R (on the application of Bancoult) v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Office (No. 1) [2001] Q.B. 1067, R (on the application of Bancoult) v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (No. 2) [2008] UKHL 61, R (on the application of Bancoult) v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (No. 2) [2016] UKSC 35 and R (on the application of Bancoult) v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (No. 3) [2014] EWCA Civ 708. The imperfect legacy of the Bancoult litigation deserves a special place within the constitutional jurisprudence of the United Kingdom. At the very core of the decisions in Bancoult (No. 1) and Bancoult (No. 2) was the relationship between the common law and the prerogative, a relationship which, as this essay will argue, ought to have imposed limitations upon the Crown. It will be argued that the decision of the House of Lords in Bancoult (No. 2) demonstrates how a failure of the common law’s role to ‘admeasure’ the prerogative amounts to ‘bad law’, especially where, as was in the case of colonial legislation in Bancoult (No. 2), there is arguably ineffective parliamentary oversight. Furthermore, the Bancoult litigation raises issues of the normative purpose of accountability of the prerogative and the competing interests of constitutionalism, national interest and public opinion. In terms as to whether the decision to remove the right of abode could be reviewed by the courts, the national interest of the United Kingdom was an important consideration. The Bancoult litigation highlights the uneasy legacy of colonialism, namely, the treatment of British colonial subjects, the attempts to deny or fetter the rights of these subjects to return home or to engage in economic enterprise, and the limitations on seeking redress before the domestic courts and at the European Court of Human Rights (see Bancoult (No. 2), Bancoult (No. 3) and Chagos Islanders v United Kingdom (Admissibility) (2013) 56 E.H.R.R. SE15).
Definitions of efficiency
This is the third in a series of occasional notes on economics

Decision makers are increasingly faced with the challenge of reconciling growing demand for health care services with available funds.1 Economists argue that the achievement of (greater) efficiency from scarce resources should be a major criterion for priority setting. This note examines three concepts of efficiency: technical, productive, and allocative.

Efficiency measures whether healthcare resources are being used to get the best value for money.1 Health care can be seen an intermediate product, in the sense of being a means to the end of improved health. Efficiency is concerned with the relation between resource inputs (costs, in the form of labour, capital, or equipment) and either intermediate outputs (numbers treated, waiting time, etc) or final health outcomes (lives saved, life years gained, quality adjusted life years (QALYs)). Although many evaluations use intermediate outputs as a measure of effectiveness, this can …