Australia's constitution after Whitlam / Brendan Lim.

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2017.

1st edition

87816

Constitutional history -- Australia.

Australia. -- Constitution Act.

Australia -- Politics and government -- 1945.

Part 1. Introduction

I. New questions

II. The plan

Part 2. Informal constitutional change

I. The possibility of informal change

II. The identification of informal change

III. The legitimacy of informal change

Part 3. The Whitlam dismissal

I. The standard narrative

II. The dismissal and the constitutional canon

III. The higher law narrative

IV. Conclusion

Part 4. The Murphy affair

I. Events of 1975-1986

II. Murphy and the standard narrative

III. Murphy and the higher law narrative

IV. Conclusion

Part 5. The Mason court

I. Internal point of view

II. Dixon's orthodoxy

III. Popular sovereignty foreshadowed: 1962-1986

IV. Popular sovereignty ascendant: 1987-1995

V. Parliamentary supremacy returns: 1996-

VI. Conclusion

Part 6. The Howard referendum

I. Constitutional law and identity

II. Whitlam and republicanism

III. Republicanism reinvented

IV. Clash of grammars

V. Conclusion

Part 7. Conclusion.

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. Proposes a new understanding of the 1975 constitutional crisis in Australia and its ongoing effects, based on competing accounts of informal constitutional change. Draws on theoretical insights from both American and British constitutional models Explains key developments in Australian constitutional law and theory with sensitivity to social and political context. - Publisher's website.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

9781107119468

xxiii, 278 p. : color ill. ; 24 cm