view

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENT IN AUSTRALIA: ACCOMMODATING RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT WITH THE SEPARATION OF POWERS

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENT IN AUSTRALIA: ACCOMMODATING RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT WITH THE SEPARATION OF POWERS

Click here to read the article

Abstract: The Australian Constitution has been interpreted by the High Court of Australia as implying a legal separation of powers. However, although it has been possible to apply this doctrine rigorously to maintain a separation of judicial power from the political branches, it sits uneasily within a constitutional framework which also provides for responsible government and a parliamentary executive pursuant to the Westminster model, especially as regards the separation of legislative and executive power inter se. So long as the general executive power of the Commonwealth was limited in ambit by the non-statutory executive powers recognised by the common law, generally referred to as the prerogative, an accommodation could be reached between those underlying constitutional principles. This has now been upset by the recent recognition by the High Court of an inherent executive power residing in s.61 of the Constitution defi ned rather imprecisely by “national” considerations. This article examines and discusses these developments in attempting to understand the extent to which it is possible to maintain a legal separation between executive and legislative power in Australia.

Keywords: separation of powers; responsible government; parliamentary supremacy; common law executive powers; inherent executive power; “nationhood” executive power; executive prerogatives and capacities

Click here to read the article

You may also like

Stefan H C Lo

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE IN THE CONTEXT OF INSOLVENT COMPANIES
Cath Sylvester, Rory O’Boyle and Emma Hall

DATA WOMBLING: WHAT RE-ANALYSIS OF NATURALLY OCCURRING STUDENT DATA CAN TELL US ABOUT COURSES, STUDENT PERFORMANCE AND ACCESS TO THE LEGAL PROFESSION
Peter Gerangelos

Author's other articles in JICL
INHERENT EXECUTIVE POWER IN IRELAND — LESSONS FOR AUSTRALIA
VOLUME JUNE 2019

View PDF file

View PDF file

View PDF file

View PDF file

Login/Register

Submissions

JICL welcomes full length articles (generally not exceeding 13,000 words inclusive of footnotes), shorter contributions in the form of notes and comments (generally not exceeding 8,000 words inclusive of footnotes) and book review articles of not more than 6,000 words.

We accept contributions for consideration on an exclusive submission basis. When submitting an article please certify that it is an unpublished article (that is, it has not been previously published in substantially similar form or with substantially similar content) and that it is not under consideration by any other journal.

To facilitate anonymous review, please give the names of authors and their short biographical information and acknowledgments in a separate page.

Authors retain copyright in the words used, but upon submission of material for publication, grant Sweet & Maxwell a licence to publish the submission in print and/or digital formats. Sweet & Maxwell retains copyright in the design, format and layout of all material published in JICL.

Once submissions are published, authors are entitled to one copy of the issue, 10 offprint copies and a PDF version of the submission.

Authors who send articles published in JICL to other publishers or media must include a reference to the publication of the article by JICL and Sweet & Maxwell.

Contributions and book reviews should be submitted in Microsoft Word format by way of email attachment to Professor Anton Cooray at Anton.cooray.1@city.ac.uk.

Style Guide

Authors should follow the OSCOLA citation system (http://www.law.ox.ac.uk/publications/oscola.php), except that we prefer authors to use indenting sparingly.

JICL uses the following heading levels: Main headings are in bold and preceded by a Roman numeral; second-level headings are in bold and italics and preceded by an uppercase alphabet; third-level headings are preceded by an Arabic numeral; and fourth-level headings are in italics and preceded by a lowercase alphabet.