Between 1990 and 1993, the Australian High Court handed down an amazing series of judgments. Twelve cases were involved. Six of them were primarily concerned with curbing the power of tile executive or modifying the rule of law doctrine. The remaining six focused on the protection of the rights of individuals. It is suggested that these decisions, four of which were unanimous and only two of which had as many as three Justices in dissent, reveal a major, and possibly a long-term, shift in the orientation of the Court. Using its own and British jurisprudence as a springboard, the Court is rejuvenating the traditional doctrine of the rule of law by applying it not only to rights against the state — the traditional view of civil and political rights — but also to claims upon the state, which some theorists consider are non-rights and only programmatic in their nature. It has begun to extend the concept of the rule of law into the area of substantive, as distinct from formal, equality. Finally, it has elevated certain rights to the status of a new and potent “common law of the Constitution”.

There is undoubtedly a growing willingness in the High Court to find constitutional implications protecting individual freedoms or rights. There are a number of possible bases for this approach, including the separation of powers and the common law. In this context, the High Court's decisions in Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd v Commonwealth (No 2) (the Political Advertising case) and Nationwide News Pty Ltd v Wills (which together I shall call the “principal cases”) are very significant. A majority of six judges in the decisions held both that the Constitution entrenches the system of representative democracy and that this in tum implies constitutional protection of free speech on political matters. The two cases were handed down on the same day and must be read together as. the judges' reasoning for these conclusions overlap between the cases. The significance of the principal cases is twofold. They constitute the clearest acceptance by the Court to date of an implied constitutional limitation relating to individual freedom. More importantly, they establish a new basis for finding further constitutional implications. If freedom of political communication is constitutionally protected because it is essential to representative democracy, other freedoms and requirements might be similarly essential and be similarly protected.

In 1981 and in following years Australian parliaments embarked upon a novel experiment: statutory reform of the general approaches to statutory interpretation. The best known of these provisions (called here “purpose rules”) is s 15AA of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 (Cth).

The United States is said to be undergoing a republican revival. Republicanism is a political theory and philosophy that has become enmeshed in the debates surrounding United States constitutionalism. Commentators have argued for several different paradigms of republicanism. Frequently, support for a particular paradigm has been sought from an understanding of historical and modern political thought and, more significantly for our purposes, from the era that saw the birth of the United States Constitution.

The multifarious origins of, and many views on, republicanism, as well as the number of commentators moulding the concept to suit their own ends, make republicanism difficult to pin down. The core elements of modern republicanism may be taken to refer to a system of government by the people equally that seeks to achieve the common good through deliberation by political actors who act not in their own interest or the interests of their constituents but for the community as a whole. This is a far cry from the “militarist, elitist, religious, and sexist sentiments” historically displayed by republicanism.