Autocratic Tendencies, Parliamentary Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law: A Case Study of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024

Abstract The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty is the cornerstone of the UK constitution, granting Parliament the ultimate authority to legislate without legal restraint. The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 epitomises the extraordinary power of Westminster Parliament and exposes its potential for executive/legislative overreach. By directly contravening the Supreme Court’s decision from 2023 in R (on the application of AAA (Syria) and others) , in which it emphasised that Rwanda would fail to comply with the principle of non-refoulement, the Act defied domestic and international legal norms. Despite this judgment and clear breaches of international law, the Conservative Government under Rishi Sunak, employed autocratic policy tools by deliberately restricting judicial oversight, enabling executive-driven legislative dominance, and eroding legal accountability and the rule of law to introduce the Act. Although the Act has been repealed, its constitutional significance endures, serving as a stark warning against unchecked executive authority and the dangerous precedent of using autocratic policy tools to bypass legal safeguards. This article employs the Act as a case study to argue that while parliamentary sovereignty enables such sweeping legislative actions, this case set a dangerous precedent by sidelining judicial scrutiny, suppressing institutional checks and challenging the very foundations of the UK’s constitutional order.