Melbourne Corporation v Commonwealth | |
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Court | High Court of Australia |
Full case name | The Lord Mayor, Councillors and Citizens of the City of Melbourne v The Commonwealth and Another |
Decided | 13 August 1947 |
Citation(s) | [1947] HCA 26, (1947) 74 CLR 31 |
Court membership | |
Judge(s) sitting | Latham CJ, Rich, Starke, Dixon, McTiernan, Williams JJ |
Case opinions | |
(5:1) Any Commonwealth law that is otherwise valid under a head of power in s51 or some other part of the Constitution will be invalid if it denies the existence or ability of a State to govern itself or the federal structure of the Commonwealth or singles out any one State |
Melbourne Corporation v Commonwealth, also known as the Melbourne Corporation case or the State banking case, [1] is an important case in Australian constitutional law. It stands for the proposition that there are limits on the scope of express Commonwealth legislative powers which can be implied from the federal character of the Constitution.
The Melbourne Corporation principle is an implied limit on Commonwealth legislative power under the Constitution of Australia.
The principle renders constitutionally invalid any Commonwealth law that is otherwise valid under a head of power in s51 or some other part of the Constitution if it:
This constitutional protection is one of the few reliable protections in the Australian Constitution against legislative and executive power, the other main protection being the Chapter III Separation of Powers Doctrine.
The recent case of Austin v Commonwealth [3] conflated the original two-limbed test of the original case into an expanded 1st limb so that a commonwealth law that affects a state's ability to administer itself is constitutionally invalid.
Australian constitutional law is the area of the law of Australia relating to the interpretation and application of the Constitution of Australia. Legal cases regarding Australian constitutional law are often handled by the High Court of Australia, the highest court in the Australian judicial system. Several major doctrines of Australian constitutional law have developed.
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Amalgamated Society of Engineers v Adelaide Steamship Co Ltd, commonly known as the Engineers case, was a landmark decision by the High Court of Australia on 31 August 1920. The immediate issue concerned the Commonwealth's power under s51(xxxv) of the Constitution but the court did not confine itself to that question, using the opportunity to roam broadly over constitutional interpretation.
Australian Capital Television v Commonwealth, is a decision of the High Court of Australia.
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The reserved powers doctrine was a principle used by the inaugural High Court of Australia in the interpretation of the Constitution of Australia, that emphasised the context of the Constitution, drawing on principles of federalism, what the Court saw as the compact between the newly formed Commonwealth and the former colonies, particularly the compromises that informed the text of the constitution. The doctrine involved a restrictive approach to the interpretation of the specific powers of the Federal Parliament to preserve the powers that were intended to be left to the States. The doctrine was challenged by the new appointments to the Court in 1906 and was ultimately abandoned by the High Court in 1920 in the Engineers' Case, replaced by an approach to interpretation that emphasised the text rather than the context of the Constitution.
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