An Appeal Court in Scotland has allowed an appeal which will now force a Scottish court to rule on whether or not the UK can unilaterally withdraw the Article 50 notification (HERE). I think this may turn out to be important. At the moment the government's position is that it can't and therefore voting down the final deal in the House of Commons would mean we crash out without a deal.
But if a court rules that we can withdraw Article 50 before the two year period is up, then we might be able to continue as full members of the EU if parliament votes down the final deal.
There are however, a lot of obstacles. Firstly, whatever the Scottish court rules, there will no doubt be appeals and eventually it will end up at the ECJ as the final arbiter of all things legal in the EU. This in itself will not go down well with Brexiteers.
If the ECJ confirms that we can unilaterally withdraw the notification, it will put a lot of power into the hands of individual nations who can submit and withdraw Article 50 notifications as they wish in order to put pressure on the Commission or their fellow EU members. It would be a recipe for chaos. I think for this reason the ECJ will be very reluctant to rule in our favour, however much they might want to.
