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Concept
Australian constitutional law
Summary
Australian constitutional law is the area of the law of Australia relating to the interpretation and application of the Constitution of Australia. Legal cases regarding Australian constitutional law are often handled by the High Court of Australia, the highest court in the Australian judicial system. Several major doctrines of Australian constitutional law have developed.
Constitution of Australia#History
Constitutional law in the Commonwealth of Australia consists mostly of that body of doctrine which interprets the Commonwealth Constitution. The Constitution itself is embodied in clause 9 of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, which was passed by the British Parliament in 1900 after its text had been negotiated in Australian Constitutional Conventions in the 1890s and approved by the voters in each of the Australian colonies. The British government did, however, insist on one change to the text, to allow a greater range of appeals to the Privy Council in London. It came into force on 1 January 1901, at which time the Commonwealth of Australia came into being.
The Constitution created a framework of government some of whose main
features, and sources of inspiration, were the following:
constitutional monarchy (British and existing colonial models)
federalism (United States model)
parliamentary, or "responsible", government (British and existing colonial models)
distinct textual separation of powers (US model)
direct election to both Houses of Parliament (then a novelty)
Governor-General as a representative of a monarch (existing colonial models, notably Canada)
requirement of a referendum for amendment of the Constitution (Swiss model)
only very limited guarantees of personal rights (rejection of the US model)
judicial review (US model)
Judicial review in Australia
The process of judicial review – the ability of The High Court of Australia to declare legislation unconstitutional and therefore invalid – has its origin in American experience, where the right of the Supreme Court of the United States to strike down legislation deemed incompatible with the Constitution was first asserted by the Supreme Court itself in the seminal case of Marbury v.
Official source
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