Content area
Full Text
This speech was delivered by the Honourable Justice Susan Crennan AC as the Victoria Law Foundation Law Oration 2014 on 21 May 2014 in the Banco Court of the Supreme Court of Victoria. Magna Carta can be considered one of the most significant documents ever drafted as it espouses many of the individual freedoms and constraints on the actions of the state that have formed the foundation of common law legal systems around the world. Nearly 800 years after it was accepted by King John of England, Magna Carta has had a striking influence on the development of shared constitutional traditions in the United Kingdom and Australia, and provides a historical basis to many of the common law values which have since been given force through legislation or case law. This speech examines some of the implications and interpretations of Magna Carta from throughout the ages, and considers its ongoing significance for Australian constitutional adjudication in providing a basis for some of the important unwritten assumptions underpinning the Constitution such as the spirit of legality and the rule of law.
I INTRODUCTION
May I commence by thanking the Dean of the Law School of the University of Melbourne and the Chair of the Victoria Law Foundation and acknowledging the privilege and pleasure involved in giving tonight's annual Law Oration. As the title foreshadows, I will start tonight with Magna Carta and finish with the Australian Constitution.
The copy of Magna Carta displayed in the Members' Hall in Parliament House in Canberra is a tangible acknowledgement of the shared constitutional heritage of Australia and the United Kingdom. That heritage has inspired the question lying behind tonight's topic: are there echoes of Magna Carta in our Constitution, the system of government which it establishes, and the common law values which it assumes?
As a composer, Mozart was prodigiously ambitious. It is said that a first performance of one of his compositions, written when 16, before a royal court elicited the royal criticism that the music contained 'too many ideas'. Given 800 years of history and evolving legal culture in Australia and the United Kingdom, it is impossible not to fear, and indeed admit, that discussing tonight's topic will involve touching too lightly and too selectively...