The battles over official secrecy have to be fought on many different fronts. In the United Kingdom—whose ministers and public servants allegedly have a “passion for secrecy”—this was more than usually evident during 1967. Two pieces of legislation—namely, the Parliamentary Commissioner Act, 1967 (U.K.) and the Public Records Act, 1967 (Eng.)—represented a modest triumph for those who would wish to see more light shed upon the affairs of the nation. Elsewhere the picture was rather more familiar. The Security Commission recommended a further tightening of documentary security in the Cabinet Office; this followed upon the conviction under the Official Secrets Acts, 1911 to 1939 (U.K.) of a young typist in the Cabinet Office, “the first known occasion on which classified papers have been extracted from” this inner sanctum of government.

Though at times inconvenient for lawyers and their clients, the use by the Commonwealth of delegated legislation to fill lacunae in statutes is hardly remarkable, and the constitutional validity of provisions authorising that use even less a matter of controversy. Nonetheless, there may be reason to doubt whether the same can so readily be said of the inclusion in Commonwealth statutes of so-called ‘Henry VIII’ clauses – that is, statutory provisions purporting to authorise the promulgation of subordinate legislation that either amends or is inconsistent with the relevant principal statute. In particular, one might ask to what extent such provisions may, regardless of their width, be accommodated within the distribution of power contemplated by the text and structure of the Constitution.

The task of answering this question requires, as a first step, that fresh consideration be given to the limits, if any, upon Parliament’s ability to confer on other institutions some part of the legislative power of the Commonwealth.

The possibility that an Australian State might one day seek to unilaterally secede from the Commonwealth has always held an ambiguous position in the political and constitutional folklore of Australia. On the one hand, such a notion conjures up visions of rampant political idiosyncrasy so ludicrous as to provoke little more than amused disbelief. On the other, even to pose the conceptual question of the disintegration of the painstakingly constructed and laboriously maintained Australian federal structure is to raise an issue almost too distasteful to contemplate. The status of secession as both a political and constitutional topic has thus essentially been that of a joke, but of a joke which, when fully considered, might be regarded as being in thoroughly bad taste.

This article explores the idea that constitutional scholars may be thought of as constitutional actors analogous to integrity institutions and examines the normative implications of conceiving of constitutional scholars in this way. One implication of such an analogy is to strengthen academic freedom and protect the integrity and independence of constitutional scholarship. Moreover, viewing constitutional scholars as constitutional actors also sharpens our understanding of the ethical obligations of constitutional scholarship: of ‘academic self-awareness’ and of ‘decisional’ and ‘institutional’ independence. This duty of independence may be equally important to the public standing, expert status and integrity of the constitutional law discipline in this highly politicised populist moment.

Australia appears to be following the trend in mainly Western countries of recognising animal sentience in the law. This article sets out a typology of animal sentience recognition provisions that have been enacted, or have been proposed, in Australian jurisdictions to date. These include provisions or proposed provisions located in statutory objects, statutory principles, statutory definitions and a treaty. Depending on legislative context, these provisions, and proposed provisions (if enacted), may have different legal consequences. The trend towards legally recognising animal sentience may also signal further positive legal reforms for animals in the future.