Law Notes Federal Constitutional Law Notes
Cases and materials summary notes based on Blackshield & Williams Constitutional Law (2011), super summaries intended for easy reference in an open book exam and "policy notes" geared towards writing essays. Structure of the cases and materials summary notes are as follows:
Class 1- Fundamentals of Australian Constitutional Law
Class 2&3 - The high Court and Constitutional Interpretation
Class 4 - The High Court and Characterisation
Class 5 - Inconsistency
Class 6&7 - Economics Powers
Cl...
The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Federal Constitutional Law Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:
In the Engineers’ Case it was said that the principles applied to the CTH applied to the states and generally judgments moved in focus from what the CTH could to States to what a State could do to the Commonwealth
In Melbourne Corporation v Commonwealth these vague notions were coalesced into a doctrine that limited only what the CTH could do to states
Melbourne Corporation v Commonwealth (1947) 74 CLR 31 Facts: During WWII CBA was given a power to oversee private banks and control the supply of money and credit. The Banking Act 1945 sought to make this permanent. Ben Chifley (PM and Treasurer) proposed to compel states and authorities, including LGAs to bank with the CB. Section 48 provided that banks could not conduct banking business for a State or authority of a State, including an LGA without consent of the treasurer. The Melbourne City Council were notified that it was an authority to which s 48 applied and thus sought to have it struck down. Held: s 48 is invalid Dixon J noted that the Engineers’ Case stood for the prima facie rule that a power to legislate wrt a given subject gives the Parliament power to make laws on that subject which affect the operation of State agencies. But this is subject to three reservations:
Though this control can be attempted where a matter falls within a head of power but it doesn’t fallow that that connection with the matter brings a law aimed at controlling the State’s exercise of its powers within the exercise of CTH legislative power. These laws wear two aspects:
But there must be firm adherence to the principle that the federal power of taxation won’t support laws placing special burdens on states. The federal system itself is the foundation of the restraint on the use of power to control States – and this constitutional objective applies to all powers if States are made the subject of special burdens (except those which are concerned with special states – 31, 32, 33, 35).
“To my mind, the efficacy of the system logically demands that, unless a given legislative power appears from its content, context or subject matter so to intend, it should not be understood as authorizing the CTH to make a law aimed at the restriction or control of a State in the exercise of its executive authority. In whatever way it may be expressed an intention of this sort is, in my opinion, to be plainly seen in the very frame of the Constitution” (The other judges based their conclusion on different emphasis): Starke J also thought that the maintenance of States and their powers is as much an object of the Constitution as the maintenance of CTH power and thus they could not abolish one another. However he differed from Dixon J in that he thought the presence/absence of discrimination was not a decisive test for... |
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Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Federal Constitutional Law Notes.
Cases and materials summary notes based on Blackshield & Williams Constitutional Law (2011), super summaries intended for easy reference in an open book exam and "policy notes" geared towards writing essays. Structure of the cases and materials summary notes are as follows:
Class 1- Fundamentals of Australian Constitutional Law
Class 2&3 - The high Court and Constitutional Interpretation
Class 4 - The High Court and Characterisation
Class 5 - Inconsistency
Class 6&7 - Economics Powers
Cl...
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