By analysing original sources and evaluating conceptual frameworks, this book discusses the idea proclaimed in the Preamble to the Constitution that Australia is a federal commonwealth. Taking careful account of the influence which the American, Canadian and Swiss Constitutions had upon the framers of the Australian Constitution, the author shows how the framers wrestled with the problem of integrating federal ideas with inherited British traditions and their own experiences of parliamentary government. In so doing, the book explains how the Constitution came into being in the context of the groundswell of federal ideas then sweeping the English-speaking world. In advancing an original argument about the relationship between the formation of the Constitution, the representative institutions, configurations of power and amending formulas contained therein, light is shed on the terms and structure of the Constitution and a range of problems associated with its interpretation and practical operation are addressed.

Author: Nicholas Aroney
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 03/02/2009
Pages: 446
Weight: 1.55lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780521716895

About the Author
Aroney, Nicholas: - Nicholas Aroney is a Reader in Law at the T. C. Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, a member of the Australian Association of Constitutional Law and a fellow of the Centre for Public, International and Comparative Law at the University of Queensland.