Australia's Constitution after Whitlam (Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law, Series Number 17) - Softcover

Lim, Brendan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1107551994 ISBN 13: 9781107551992

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2018

Synopsis

Australia's constitutional crisis of 1975 was not simply about the precise powers of the Senate or the Governor-General. It was about competing accounts of how to legitimate informal constitutional change. For Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, and the parliamentary tradition that he invoked, national elections sufficiently legitimated even the most constitutionally transformative of his goals. For his opponents, and a more complex tradition of popular sovereignty, more decisive evidence was required of the consent of the people themselves. This book traces the emergence of this fundamental constitutional debate and chronicles its subsequent iterations in sometimes surprising institutional configurations: the politics of judicial appointment in the Murphy Affair; the evolution of judicial review in the Mason Court; and the difficulties Australian republicanism faced in the Howard Referendum. Though the patterns of institutional engagement have varied, the persistent question of how to legitimate informal constitutional change continues to shape Australia's constitution after Whitlam.

About this title

About the Author

Brendan Lim is a barrister at the New South Wales Bar, practising principally in public and commercial law, and a fellow at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, University of New South Wales, Sydney. He was previously Counsel Assisting the Commonwealth Solicitor-General and a Judge's Associate at the High Court and the Federal Court of Australia.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1107551994
• ISBN 13: 9781107551992
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 302