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The Engineers Case Centenary: SCOTUS and the Origins of Australia's Scabrous Constitutional Signature Cover

The Engineers Case Centenary: SCOTUS and the Origins of Australia's Scabrous Constitutional Signature

Open Access
|Jan 2021

Abstract

Since the Engineers Case decision in 1920, the role of the United States Constitution in interpreting the Australian Constitution has been diminished, leading to inefficiencies in High Court of Australia (HCA) dealing with constitutional issues. To explain this thesis, the article looks at the 7,657 cases decided by the HCA, from the first case in 1903, to the 31st of August 2020, the centenary of the Engineers Case. The analysis identifies outliers that have much higher complexity (in terms of word-length) than the other judgments. This complexity has one common denominator: comparative analysis with the United States Constitution. The article explains why this common denominator has resulted in such complexity, and concludes with possible research extensions on the roles of the Australian judiciary in embracing SCOTUS jurisprudence when interpreting the Australian Constitution.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/bjals-2021-0001 | Journal eISSN: 2719-5864 | Journal ISSN: 2049-4092
Language: English
Page range: 27 - 106
Published on: Jan 6, 2021
Published by: Birmingham City University
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 2 issues per year

© 2021 Benjamen Franklen Gussen, Sahar Araghi, published by Birmingham City University
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.