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Constitutional Text, Authorial Intentions and Implied Rights: A Response to Allan and Arcioni

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Jonathan Crowe Open the ORCID record for Jonathan Crowe [Opens in a new window]
Jonathan Crowe*
Affiliation:
Bond University
*
The author may be contacted at jcrowe@bond.edu.au.
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Abstract

Jim Allan contends in a recent issue of the Federal Law Review that the High Court’s implied rights jurisprudence is illegitimate, because it is not adequately moored in the constitutional text and the historical intentions of its authors. Elisa Arcioni’s response accepts that constitutional doctrines should be grounded in the text and authorial intentions but argues that the implied rights cases meet this standard. Arcioni is correct, but more can usefully be said about the precise interpretive basis for the implied rights reasoning. A faithful attempt to give effect to the framers’ intentions, as I have shown in detail elsewhere, must sometimes ask not only what they had in mind when the text was written but also what those intentions entail in a contemporary setting. This involves placing both the constitutional text and authorial intentions within a broader context of legal and social institutions. The High Court’s implied rights jurisprudence, viewed in this light, is a legitimate attempt to identify and apply the Constitution’s intended meaning.

Type
In Focus Response to Volume 48
Information
Federal Law Review , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 149 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 The Author(s)

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Footnotes

Thanks to Elisa Arcioni, Danielle Ireland-Piper and Peta Stephenson for their comments on an earlier draft.

References

1. James Allan, ‘Constitutional Interpretation Wholly Unmoored from Constitutional Text: Can the HCA Fix Its Own Mess?’ (2020) 48 Federal Law Review 30.

2. Elisa Arcioni, ‘Some Reflections on “Constitutional Interpretation Wholly Unmoored from Constitutional Text”’ (2020) 48 Federal Law Review 279.

3. See particularly Jonathan Crowe, Natural Law and the Nature of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2019) ch 11–12; Jonathan Crowe, ‘The Narrative Model of Constitutional Implications: A Defence of Roach v Electoral Commissioner’ (2019) 42 University of New South Wales Law Journal 91; Jonathan Crowe, ‘Not-So-Easy Cases’ (2019) 40 Statute Law Review 75; Jonathan Crowe, ‘Functions, Context and Constitutional Values’ in Rosalind Dixon (ed), Australian Constitutional Values (Hart, 2018) 61-73; Jonathan Crowe, ‘The Role of Contextual Meaning in Judicial Interpretation’ (2013) 41 Federal Law Review 417.

4. See, for example, James Allan, ‘The Three “Rs” of Recent Australian Judicial Activism: Roach, Rowe and (No)’riginalism’ (2012) 36 Melbourne University Law Review 743; James Allan and Nicholas Aroney, ‘An Uncommon Court: How the High Court of Australia Has Undermined Australian Federalism’ (2008) 30 Sydney Law Review 245; James Allan, ‘The Curious Concept of the “Living Tree” (or Non-Locked-In) Constitution’ in Grant Huscroft and Bradley Miller (eds), The Challenge of Originalism: Theories of Constitutional Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 2011) 179-202.

5. Allan (n 1) 33.

6. Ibid 37–42.

7. Ibid 44.

8. See, for example, Australian Capital Television v Commonwealth (1992) 177 CLR 106 (‘ACTV’); Nationwide News Pty Ltd v Wills (1992) 177 CLR 1 (‘Nationwide News’); Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1997) 189 CLR 520 (‘Lange’).

9. Roach v Electoral Commissioner (2007) 233 CLR 162 (‘Roach’); Rowe v Electoral Commissioner (2010) 243 CLR 1 (‘Rowe’). Allan calls Rowe ‘one of the worst reasoned decisions of the High Court in its history’, possibly ‘the worst’: Allan (n 1) 37. He must not have read Krygger v Williams (1912) 15 CLR 366.

10. Commonwealth v New South Wales (1915) 20 CLR 54 (‘Wheat Case’). See also R v Kirby; Ex parte Boilermakers’ Society of Australia (1956) 94 CLR 254.

11. (1947) 74 CLR 31.

12. Allan (n 1) 31–2.

13. Ibid 44–5.

14. Ibid 33 (original emphasis).

15. Jones v Commonwealth (No 2) (1965) 112 CLR 206.

16. See J C Morris, ‘Some Aspects of the Commonwealth Parliament’s Defence Power Under the Constitution’ (1941) 53 Res Judicatae 221.

17. Commonwealth v Australian Capital Territory (2013) 250 CLR 441.

18. Allan (n 1) 33.

19. Ibid 33–4.

20. See Crowe, Natural Law and the Nature of Law (n 3) 215–17; Crowe, ‘The Role of Contextual Meaning in Judicial Interpretation’ (n 3) 434–6.

21. Crowe, Natural Law and the Nature of Law (n 3) 197–207; Crowe, ‘The Role of Contextual Meaning in Judicial Interpretation’ (n 3) 419–26; Crowe, ‘The Narrative Model of Constitutional Implications’ (n 3) 98–108.

22. Allan (n 1) 33.

23. For discussion of the notion of intelligibility and its dependence on social context, see Jonathan Crowe, ‘Intelligibility, Practical Reason and the Common Good’ in Jonathan Crowe and Constance Youngwon Lee (eds), Research Handbook on Natural Law Theory (Edward Elgar, 2019) 296-303.

24. For a useful overview, see Heidi Hurd, ‘Interpretation Without Intentions’ in George Pavlakos and Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco (eds), Reasons and Intentions in Law and Practical Agency (Cambridge University Press, 2015) 52-71.

25. (1992) 177 CLR 1.

26. (1992) 177 CLR 106.

27. See, for example, ibid 137 (Mason CJ), 227–8 (McHugh J).

28. Allan (n 1) 33.

29. (1992) 177 CLR 106, 230.

30. Ibid 231.

31. (1992) 177 CLR 1, 74.

32. (1997) 189 CLR 520.

33. Arcioni (n 2) 280.

34. (1997) 189 CLR 520, 567.

35. For discussion, see Adrienne Stone, ‘The Limits of Constitutional Text and Structure: Standards of Review and the Freedom of Political Communication’ (1999) 23 Melbourne University Law Review 668; Adrienne Stone, ‘The Limits of Constitutional Text and Structure Revisited’ (2005) 28 University of New South Wales Law Journal 842.

36. Arcioni (n 2) 280.

37. (1992) 177 CLR 106, 230.

38. (1992) 177 CLR 1, 74.

39. For detailed discussion, see Crowe, ‘The Narrative Model of Constitutional Implications’ (n 3).

40. (1975) 135 CLR 1, 36.

41. (2007) 233 CLR 162, 174.

42. Ibid 186–7.

43. Ibid 187–8 (Gummow, Kirby and Crennan JJ).

44. Ibid 198 (Gummow, Kirby and Crennan JJ).

45. (2017) 261 CLR 328 (‘Brown’).

46. (2015) 257 CLR 178 (‘McCloy’).

47. See also Clubb v Edwards [2019] HCA 11; Comcare v Banerji [2019] HCA 23.

48. Nationwide News (1992) 177 CLR 1, 46–52 (Brennan J), 69–77 (Deane and Toohey JJ); ACTV (1992) 177 CLR 106, 135–40 (Mason CJ), 208–17 (Gaudron J), 227–33 (McHugh J).

49. (2007) 233 CLR 162, [1]–[12] (Gleeson CJ), [44]–[75] (Gummow, Kirby and Crennan JJ), [121]–[142] (Hayne J).

50. (2017) 261 CLR 328, [18]–[37] (Kiefel CJ, Bell and Keane JJ), [191]–[193] (Gageler J), [238]–[247] (Nettle J).

51. Allan (n 1) 31.

52. (2017) 261 CLR 328, 361 (Kiefel CJ, Bell and Keane JJ).

53. Allan (n 1) 35.

54. The majority joint judgment in McCloy acknowledges that the ‘adequacy in balance’ component of structured proportionality involves ‘a value judgment, consistently with the limits of the judicial function, describing the balance between the importance of the purpose served by the restrictive measure and the extent of the restriction it imposes on the freedom’: (2015) 257 CLR 178, [2] (French CJ, Kiefel, Bell and Keane JJ). However, the fact that a reasoning process involves a value judgment does not mean it is purely subjective. The High Court’s proportionality deliberations, as mentioned above, are typically grounded in extensive contextual reasoning.

55. See, for example, the sharp disagreements among Supreme Court judges on the original meaning of the right to bear arms in the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution in District of Columbia v Heller, 554 US 570 (2008).

56. James Allan, ‘Thin Beats Fat Yet Again: Conceptions of Democracy’ (2006) 25 Law and Philosophy 533, 535; James Allan, ‘An Unashamed Majoritarian’ (2004) 27 Dalhousie Law Journal 537, 538.

57. See Jonathan Crowe, ‘What’s So Bad About Judicial Review?’ (2008) 24(4) Policy 30.

58. See, for example, Suri Ratnapala, ‘The Idea of a Constitution and Why Constitutions Matter’ (1999) 15(4) Policy 3.

59. See Jonathan Crowe, ‘Human, All Too Human: Human Fallibility and the Separation of Powers’ in Rebecca Ananian-Welsh and Jonathan Crowe (eds), Judicial Independence in Australia: Contemporary Challenges, Future Directions (Federation Press, 2016) 37-48.