Interpreting Executive Power

The breadth of executive power is a topic of enduring concern. Yet, it is rarely considered through an interpretive lens. This collection of papers from some of Australia's leading judges, practitioners and academics explores how Australian courts do construe the scope of executive power, and how they should.

In particular, the collection focuses on the ways in which courts should interpret statutes which confer powers on the executive branch, and the challenges posed in this regard by the proliferation of statute law, contemporary legislative drafting techniques, and broader developments in the field of statutory interpretation. These themes of statutory interpretation and executive power have dominated recent High Court decisions in public law as well as the speeches and extra-curial writings of High Court judges in recent years.

The collection also examines the related topic of the interpretation of non-statutory executive power, with a particular focus on how statutory and non-statutory power might interact, and whether the principles which guide the interpretation of powers that come from statute might also be deployed in the non-statutory realm.