Williams [No 2] Symposium: Some Curiosities and Further Thoughts on Williams [No 2]

By Benjamin Saunders

Williams [No 2] Case Page

This post makes some additional comments about the Court’s reasoning with respect to executive power (the subject of an earlier post by Cheryl Saunders (no relation to the author)) and also briefly discusses the Commonwealth waiving debts owed to it as a consequence of the Court’s finding of invalidity.

Executive power, British and Australian
I do not disagree with the opinions expressed by Cheryl Saunders in her earlier post, that ‘Williams [No 2] does not add a great deal of substance to the conclusions about the ambit of the executive power of the Commonwealth reached in Williams [No 1]’. However, I wish to make some additional observations, namely that the Court in Williams [No 2] reached its decision about the scope of executive power in an unusual way. Continue reading