Helen Irving

Alexander v Minister for Home Affairs [2022] HCA 19 (Alexander), handed down by the High Court on 8 June this year, involved a challenge to section 36B of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (as amended in 2020) (the Citizenship Act), which purported to empower the Minister to strip citizenship from an Australian dual national who, ‘by their conduct, demonstrates that the person has repudiated their allegiance to Australia’ and if the Minister is satisfied that ‘it would be contrary to the public interest for the person to remain an Australian citizen.’ The revocation of citizenship, the Court concluded, was punitive. Punishment for unlawful conduct, as it held in Chu Kheng Lim v Minister for Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs [1992], is a judicial function, made exclusive to the federal courts under Chapter III of the Constitution. Citizenship revocation, imposed by the executive, therefore breaches the constitutional separation of powers. Section 36B was accordingly invalid, and Mr Alexander, an Australian-Turkish dual national whose citizenship had been revoked after he travelled to Syria (and following an adverse ASIO report), remained an Australian citizen.

Theunis Roux

Australia is one of the few liberal democracies today without a judicially enforced bill of rights in its national constitution. Instead, the protection of rights is largely left to the democratic process. What does the US Supreme Court’s recent decision on the right to abortion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization 597 US ___ (2022) tell us about the virtues of this approach?

Welcome to the July edition of the AUSPUBLAW Australian Public Law Events Roundup.