Cheney v Conn

Cheney v Conn (Inspector of Taxes) [1968] 1 All ER 779 was a decision of the English High Court.

Facts

A taxpayer, Cheney, argued that the imposition of taxes under the Finance Act 1964 was unlawful as the taxes were used to fund nuclear weapons, which were banned by the Geneva Convention.[1]

Judgment

Ungoed-Thomas J dismissed the claim, holding:

If the purpose for which a statute may be used is an invalid purpose, then such remedy as there may be must be directed to dealing with that purpose and not to invalidating the statute itself. What the statute itself enacts cannot be unlawful, because what the statute says and provides is itself the law, and the highest form of law that is known to this country. It is the law which prevails over every other form of law, and it is not for the court to say that a parliamentary enactment, the highest law in this country, is illegal.[2]

Footnotes

  1. "Cheney v Conn [1968]". Webstroke Law. Retrieved 29 June 2015.
  2. ["http://sixthformlaw.info/02_cases/mod2/cases_supremacy.htm#Cheney%20v%20Conn%20[Inspector%20of%20Taxes]%20[1968]%20Chancery%20Division" ""Cheney v Conn (Inspector of Taxes) [1968] Chancery Division""] Check |url= value (help). Sixth form law. Retrieved 29 June 2015.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 6/17/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.