Book Review: Legislative, Executive and Judicial Powers in Australia
| Author | P. Brazil |
| DOI | 10.1177/0067205X7700800307 |
| Published date | 01 September 1977 |
| Date | 01 September 1977 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
,1977]
Book
Reviews 371
provides valuable insight in fields in which the ignorance of most
lawyers nlust be remedied if judicial review of administrative decisions
is
to prosper; the commentaries of Professor Encel and of
Dr
Wilenski,
as political scientist and "practising bureaucrat" respectively, add
leaven to the legal loaf.
The
third
Part
of the book
is
devoted to the contentious events of
11
November 1975. Professor Zines opens the debate with afull and
careful statement of the background law
and
is
attacked by his com-
mentators in robust fashion. The next essay, by Professor Howard and
Dr
Saunders, subjects to amore detailed scrutiny the events themselves
and
is
in
turn
challenged by
Mr
Ellicott in his commentary, while
Sir Richard Eggleston provides adetailed
expositiol}-
of his own parti-
cular interpretation of section 53 of the Constitution. Whatever
conclusion
is
come to by the diligent and impartial reader (needless
to say, ahypothetical figure), it will,
after
reading this
Part,
at
least be
founded
on
more solid material
than
has yet been offered by other,
more sensational, works on the subject.
The
final
Part
of the book,
"A
Labor
Retrospect", consists of
Mr
Whitlam's own essay on his Government and the Constitution.
It
represents the latest in
that
sequence of recurring assessments of
Australian federalism, as seen through aLabor leader's eyes, which,
since the 1950s, have become asignificant
part
of
Mr
Whitlam's
contribution to political and constitutional debate.
It
alone of the
essays lacks commentators and perhaps it
is
better so, acommentator
would be hard
put
to match the characteristically astringent blend of
analysis and pungent comment which
is
the hallmark of its author.
To read it
is
to be reminded how much the
other
contributions in this
book are necessarily biographical of three years of
Mr
Whitlam in
office.
NINIAN
STEPHEN*
Legislative, Executive and Judicial Powers in Australia by W.
ANSTEY
WYNES,
LL.D.,
of
the South Australian Bar.
(The
Law Book Co. ,Ltd,
1976,
5th
Edition), pp. i-xlv, 1-590. Cloth, recommended retail price
$34.50 (ISBN: 0455 19389
4);
Paperback, recommended retail price
$24.50 (ISBN: 0455 19388
6).
The
reviewer worked in the fifties in the same Canberra office block
as
Dr
Anstey Wynes, then Legal Adviser to the Department of External
Affairs,
Mr
Leslie Lyons, then head
of
the Commonwealth Attorney-
General's Department's Advisings Division,
and
Mr
Leslie Zines (now
Professor Zines
of
the
AND
Law
School).
Dr
Wynes had come to the
Department of External Affairs in 1938 from Adelaide, to whi,ch he
*
The
Honourable Sir Ninian Stephen, K.B.E.
is
ajustice
of
the High Court of
Australia.
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