The Constitution Of A Federal Commonwealth

This book provides an engaging and distinctive treatment for anyone seeking to understand the significance and interpretation of the Constitution.

This book describes how ideas about federalism influenced those who drafted the Australian Constitution.

The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia examines the body of constitutional jurisprudence in an original and rigorous yet accessible way. It begins by exploring the historical and intellectual context of ideas surrounding the Constitution's inception, and closely examines its text, structure, principles and purposes in that light. The book then unpacks and critically analyses the High Court's interpretation of the Constitution in a manner that follows the Constitution's own logic and method of organisation. Each topic is defined through detailed reference to the existing case law, which is set out historically to facilitate an appreciation of the progressive development of constitutional doctrine since the Constitution came into force in 1901. The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia provides an engaging and distinctive treatment of this fundamental area of law. It is an excellent book for anyone seeking to understand the significance and interpretation of the Constitution.

Professor Bryce's work rises at once to an eminent place among studies of great nations and their institutions. It is, so far as America goes, a work unique in scope, spirit, and knowledge. There is nothing like it anywhere extant, nothing that approaches it. Without exaggeration, it may be called the most considerable and gratifying tribute that has yet been bestowed upon America by an Englishman, and, perhaps, by even England herself. . . . One despairs in an attempt to give an adequate account of a work so infused with knowledge and sparkling with Suggestion. Every thoughtful American will read it, and will long hold in grateful remembrance its author's name. It is a work that takes instant rank as the keenest critique and most trustworthy description of America's social and political life and is recognized as the most remarkable among English books for the accuracy of its statements, its fairness of judgment, and its clearness of comprehension. Written with full knowledge by a distinguished Englishman to dispel vulgar prejudices and to help kindred people to understand each other better, Prof. Bryce's work is in a sense an embassy of peace, a message of good-will from one nation to another. This is volume two out of four, "The State Governments".

This book is a contribution to comparative constitutional law and deals with important changes in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the original members of the present Commonwealth of Nations. It is based on lectures delivered at the University of Cambridge. The first lecture discusses the development in recent years of the constitutional autonomy of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and its effect on the constitutions of those countries and on the concept of the 'crown'. The second lecture is concerned with methods to entrench, constitutionally, individual and democratic rights. The final lecture contrasts judicial attitudes to the interpretation of the constitutions of Canada and Australia. The conclusion is reached that although the EEC is not a federation, there is a structural similarity between the distribution of governmental power within the Community and its members, and the federal issues that arise in Canada, Australia and other federations.

First published in 1888, The American Commonwealth was an instant classic, a three-volume set discussing the political structure of American society, its legal system, and its people with an analysis that is both broad and in-depth. Volume I covers the Constitution and the American political system. It discusses the structure of American government and the ways in which the living American government as an entity responds to crisis. The possibilities and power struggles inherent in the American system of government are examined and documented with a fair hand. Bryce goes into further detail about state constitutions and the differing legal structures that exist on a more local level. Anyone with an interest in politics or American history will find Bryce's commentary penetratingly insightful. British historian VISCOUNT JAMES BRYCE (1838-1922) attended the University of Glasgow and Trinity College, Oxford. He is best known for his scholarship of the Holy Roman Empire. His popular works include Studies in History and Jurisprudence (1901) and Studies in Contemporary Biography (1903).

Stephen Gardbaum proposes and examines a new way of protecting rights in a democracy.