2007 Handbooks

This unit is designed to provide students of law and other disciplines with the historical and comparative background to the Australian constitutional tradition, often seen as hybrid product of English and American influences. Topics include: the seventeenth century crisis of the English constitution, the growth of parliamentary supremacy in the United Kingdom, the colonial struggle for independence, the creation of the American constitution, the origins of judicial review, federalism, slavery and the constitutional consequences of the American Civil War. Extensive coverage will also be given to issues in modern American constitutional jurisprudence ranging from the growth of federal power in areas of social legislation and economic management to problems as race, religion, free speech, and abortion.

The central problem dealt with by this unit is how a constitution which has remained much the same, in formal terms, since 1787 has been invoked to justify several different regimes, here described as the first [federal] republic, the second [bourgeois] republic and the third [managerial] republic.