Australian Constitutional Values

ISBN: 9781509918409 出版年：2018 页码：335 Rosalind Dixon Bloomsbury Publishing

Australian Constitutional Values is a bold, illuminating edited collection that articulates and investigates a ‘functionalist’ interpretation of the Australian Constitution. According to the collection’s editor, Rosalind Dixon, such an interpretation ‘emphasise[s] the role of individual judges’ moral and political outlooks as an influence on constitutional interpretation’, and calls for more open engagement with questions of political morality, including practical and policy impact. Yet this ‘values-oriented approach’ also pays due attention to ‘constitutional form’, requiring a ‘serious engagement with the text, history and structure of the Constitution’. Nevertheless, such an approach raises important questions in relation to the substantive content of such constitutional values, the flexibility of values as determined within textual, originalist or progressive frameworks of interpretation, and interaction with other identified values – particularly if there is conflict between values. In this context the authors in the collection consider the viability of recourse to ‘values’ as part of an interpretive framework, and explore the implications for Australian Constitutionalism. Since the book is an edited collection there are many disparate views and contributions. It is simply not possible to do justice to each in a short review like this. So the review will broadly critique the idea of ‘values’ raised in the contributions, with an accompanying apology that this will no doubt neglect some contributions in form, substance or both...