By Dr Scott Stephenson
In McCloy v New South Wales [2015] HCA 34 for the first time a majority of the High Court (French CJ, Kiefel, Bell and Keane JJ) endorsed proportionality analysis as the appropriate framework for determining whether a law violates the freedom of political communication, an implication derived from the Australian Constitution. In doing so, the majority turned to comparative materials, especially comparative constitutional scholarship, to explain and justify its decision. In this post, I consider the complications and consequences of the Court’s comparative engagement, examining the difficulties associated with drawing on the scholarship in this field before considering some implications of the Court’s move. I suggest that it gives greater prominence to two dimensions of constitutional adjudication that are typically not accorded priority, namely the value in providing legislatures with clarity about the limits of their powers and making value judgments explicit.
Complications: The necessary yet difficult task of comparatively engaging with proportionality
The decision to endorse proportionality analysis requires careful consideration of comparative case law and scholarship to ascertain what, precisely, proportionality analysis entails. While it may be, as the majority suggest, a ‘uniform analytical framework’ (at [74]), that framework does not have a uniform formulation or application. Some jurisdictions adopt a three-stage test, while others adopt a four-stage test (see [79] fn 100). In some jurisdictions, the majority of laws that fail proportionality analysis do so at the ‘necessity’ (least restrictive means) stage, while in others it is at the ‘adequate in its balance’ (proportionality in the strict sense) stage (Grimm, 2007). Continue reading