My forthcoming Article is divided into the following parts. In Part I, I survey relevant aspects of the law of § 1983 and Bivens. Painting with a broad brush and for the most part descriptively, I maintain that the Court’s concern with over-deterrence has increasingly dominated constitutional...

Litigation against a government presupposes that it is amenable to suit and there is a court of competent jurisdiction. This paper deals with the amenability to suit of, and the jurisdiction of courts over, the executive governments of the Australian Commonwealth and States. Its purpose is to...

Despite two failed referenda on the subject, local government bodies have been persistent in their campaign for the constitutional recognition of local government. It is not clear, however, what is really intended to be achieved by constitutional recognition and whether sufficient thought has...

In a 2014 article published in the Adelaide Law Review, Professor Harold Bruff explained the U.S. executive power to an Australian audience. Bruff described the constitutions of Australia and the United States as “cousins”; they share some traits — such as federalism — but in other areas...

The paradox of modern constitutionalism resides in having two imperatives, apparently irreconcilable, i.e. a governmental power generated from the ‘consent of the people' and, in order to be sustained and effective, that power must be divided, constrained and exercised through distinctive...

In this paper, I reflect on the ongoing debate concerning the protection of human rights in the UK. I attempt to situate that debate within its legal and political context by examining the underlying reasons that might explain why the Act has been the source of so much controversy. Against that...

The European financial and euro area debt crisis has exposed fundamental flaws of the system of economic governance in the euro area and namely of the legal framework introduced into primary Union law by the 1992/1993 Treaty on European Union governing economic policy coordination. This crisis...

For a number of years there has been nothing at all unusual about the United Kingdom finding itself in a state of constitutional upheaval; indeed, for some time, this has been the UK constitution’s default setting. This has sometimes been as a result of long-anticipated and carefully planned...

This article analyses the views of the framers of the Australian Constitution through the lens of the theme of popular sovereignty. It examines the leading works in political theory which have discussed the concept of popular sovereignty and identifies two main strands in that literature, namely...