Britain’s leading public-interest law firm as well as several experience litigators are drafting a legal challenge to the EU referendum [BBC profile]. The hope is to stop Britain’s exit from the EU, or, at the very least, create a parliamentary debate on the referendum. The action is expected to head to the country’s Supreme Court [official website], with the hopes of being ruled on by September. They litigators are questioning whether the Prime Minister [official website] has the legal power to implement the referendum’s results without a debate and vote by lawmakers. The hope is that the UK’s departure from the EU can be stopped if the prime minister is required to get Parliament‘s [official website] consent in order to trigger Article 50 [text], which will initiate a two-year process to leave the EU. Currently the majority of Parliament is against leaving the EU. It is also being argued that the referendum was set up to be advisory not mandatory and therefore does not have to be followed.

A majority of British Citizens voted to leave [JURIST report] the EU last month. Concern over the economic health of Britain [Reuters report] going into the future led to a global market plunge following the vote, as the pound fell as far as 10 percent against the dollar—a low not seen since 1985. While the vote has fallen in favor of departure, no legal changes have taken place yet [Guardian report], as Britain must take further steps to confirm its separation. The EU has set out a mechanism for leaving in Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, where a member state “may decide to withdraw from the union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements,” and “must notify the European council of its intention.” Under Article 50, a member country can only be removed from the EU two years after notification. While Britain might bypass this process through repeal of the European Communities Act of 1972, it is believed that this would make coming to a preferential trade agreement with the EU more difficult.