legality

What does the principle of “legality” mean in public law?

20 May 2026 by David Hart KC

Ismailov (No.2) v. Foreign Secretary, Saini J

The claim of a lack of “legality” as part of a public law challenge is often advanced in a rather free-floating way. The judge, Saini J, does some very useful clearing up of terminology in this case about a challenge to economic sanctions. The case also contains a crisp summary of other public law principles, with an application well beyond the sanctions context.

The case

Here’s a brief account of the facts and the Russian economic sanctions regime in dispute.

Sarvar Ismailov is the nephew of Alisher Usmanov. Usmanov is said to be closely associated with Vladimir Putin; in sanctions legal terminology, he is an “involved person” who may be subject to sanctions. But what about his nephew?

Ismailov had lived in the UK from the age of 13, but he and his family left the UK in March 2022 (shortly after the invasion of Ukraine) and now appears to live in Dubai. He is now 31.

Shortly after his departure, in July 2022, the UK sanctions regime (via the enabling Sanctions and Anti-Laundering Act 2018 – SAMLA – and underlying Russia Regulations) was modified so that you could be potentially designated as subject to sanctions if you were an “immediate family member” of an involved person– unsurprisingly defined as including nieces and nephews: [20] of the judgment for a summary of the modified regime.

This brought Ismailov into the frame, because of his uncle.

But despite being in the frame, a person is not designated yet. The Foreign Office (FO) then considers whether there are good reasons for the individual to be designated – and it found these in respect of Ismailov.

This designation was the overall target for this challenge.

 One of the incidental interests of the case is seeing why the FO thought that Ismailov should be designated: [65] of the judgment, setting out his business ties, including Usmanov/Usmanov companies’ past common involvement with Everton Football Club. So they were not just nephew and uncle. It was thought by the FO that Usmanov might use Ismailov (wittingly or unwittingly) as a vehicle for sanctions-busting, if Ismailov was not sanctioned; and, in reverse, Ismailov, if sanctioned, might put pressure on his uncle to distance himself from investments of strategic significance to Russia.

In legal terms, Ismailov’s challenge was to

• the July 2022 change in the law about family members via the new regulations, and
• the maintenance of Ismailov’s designated status after an administrative review in 2023-2024.

The small boats storm and the unlawful seizure of mobile phones

4 November 2022 by Marina Wheeler QC

The storm raging around small boats arriving on the south coast has been brewing for some time. In early summer the focus was a policy to send arrivals to Rwanda. Intervention by the European Court of Human Rights effectively suspended flights while a domestic ruling on the policy’s legality is awaited. Meanwhile, in Dover a migrant processing centre has been firebombed, another is dangerously overcrowded, and the new Home Secretary raises tensions by speaking of an “invasion”.

Amidst this swirl is an eye-catching Divisional Court Decision about a secret and unlawful Home Office policy to seize and download data from the mobile phones of all those arriving in small boats. The substantive Judgment in R (HM, MA and KH) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWHC 695 (Admin) was delivered on 25 March 2022, followed by an Order distilling the Court’s conclusions on 18 October 2022.