Friday, August 22, 2014

Waugh on Australia's Chinese Exclusion Case

John Waugh, Melbourne Law School, has posted an article from his backlist, Chung Teong Toy v Musgrove and the Commonwealth Executive.  It first appeared in Public Law Review 2 (1991): 160–178.  Here is the abstract:    
Alfred Deakin (credit)
This article looks at perhaps the best-known Australian constitutional case of the nineteenth Chung Teong Toy v Musgrove (1888), in which a challenge to the power of the colony of Victoria to exclude Chinese immigrants led the Supreme Court to undertake a fundamental examination of the status and powers of the Executive under the colony's constitution. At the 1891 Australian federal convention, Alfred Deakin said that the case would demand "the most careful consideration" when the federal constitution was being framed. Its history, and its context in colonial constitutional law, throw light on parts of Chapter II of the Australian Constitution, in particular s 64.
century,