Our constitution simply says that the two houses of parliament shall be directly chosen by the people. Unlike most constitutions, it does not have a provision that says something like there shall be freedom of speech or everyone has the right to freedom of expression. Our constitution does it in a very unusual way. It’s a really central democratic value and so that’s not surprising. All democratic constitutions, including ours, contain some protection of freedom of speech. You also asked me about freedom of speech. Both of those two movements, I think, are aiming at shifting the Australian Constitution so that it better represents the values of a really modern and pleural Australia. One is the constitutional recognition of Indigenous peoples and the other is the republic movement. That is seen most vividly in two questions that are around constitutional discourse. Well, does it reflect our values and beliefs? That’s a difficult question and one on which people will disagree and there is a disagreement in Australia, for example, about which the - the extent to which the Australian Constitution does and should reflect our beliefs.
So the constitution has a little bit of a Jekyll and Hyde quality.ĭoes a constitution and along with it, the freedom of expression reflect our values and beliefs and therefore what we say and what we can do? In other aspects, however, our constitution has served us very well and it has, for example, established - it provides one of the important foundations for the very robust form of democracy that we have in Australia and of which I think we can be in world terms, fairly proud.
In particular, there’s two sections that reflect very outdated ideas about race and those two sections are now largely unused but it’s somewhat worrying that they remain there. It certainly is and there are some parts of the Australian Constitution that are really quite arresting reading now. It has been interpreted since then by the High Court of Australia and that has produced a very long and really interesting body of law that all lawyers need to have training in as part of their law degree.īut surely a constitution that was formulated in the 19th century is different to the values, beliefs and ideologies we have today? It was drafted over the 1890s and came into effect in 1901. In fact, I think there are relatively few places where the constitution occupies quite the place in popular culture that it does in the United States but in Australia, it’s well to remember that we actually have one of the older constitutions of the world. The constitution is something that we associate with the US of A but with Australia, it’s sort of not so prominent. But if I want the conversation to keep going, I say my academic interests are in freedom of speech because everyone has an opinion about that. Then they say, what do you teach? Then I say, constitutional law and they say oh and that stops the conversation. I say that I teach at Melbourne Law School, usually. So Adrienne, when you meet someone at a barbecue, how do you describe what you do? She researches in the areas of constitutional law and constitutional theory, with particular attention to freedom of expression.Īdrienne Stone took some time out to Zoom chat about her work with Dr Andi Horvath. Freedom of political, academic and even personal expression is further complicated in this current ‘post-fact’ world.Īdrienne Stone is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor and Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne.
I’m Chris Hatzis, let’s eavesdrop on experts changing the world - one lecture, one experiment, one interview at a time.įreedom of speech is among the most widely protected of constitutional rights, but the nature of this responsibility is very often complex, and it varies from constitution to constitution. It’s where expert types obsess, confess and profess. Eavesdrop on Experts - stories of inspiration and insights.
0 kommentar(er)
