Yesterday morning (Washington time), as Australians slept, the United States Supreme Court handed down its much-anticipated decision on the constitutional validity of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka ‘Obamacare’). The Act, a keystone in Obama’s credentials as a progressive and reforming President, had proven as controversial and politically-charged (if not more so) as any law in post-war U.S. history.

In days of old, when Legislative Councils were appointed bodies, Labor Governments would try to swamp them with suicide squads of Members who once appointed would vote to abolish the House. Yesterday, the House of Representatives committed its own act of hara-kiri, passing a Bill in just over three hours that gave full authority to the Executive to spend money on whatever it wants without the need for further legislation or parliamentary scrutiny.

As the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee is celebrated over the next month, much will be written about how she has ‘never put a foot wrong’. But how do we know? What do we really know about how the Queen exercises her constitutional power? The answer is – astonishingly little.

In this blog, Ellen Joy, one of the CRU’s interns, discusses the significance of the use of the term ‘peoples’ in the constitutional amendment proposed by the Expert Panel on Indigenous Constitutional Recognition:
What difference does a letter ‘s’ make?

The Australian Electoral Commission today released its analysis of the Fair Work Australia report into Mr Thomson. The AEC’s analysis (which can be found here: http://www.aec.gov.au/Parties_and_Representatives/compliance/files/hsu-report.pdf)
discloses two significant issues with respect to the operation of the disclosure laws under the Commonwealth Electoral Act.
First, the ‘donations’ that allegedly funded the employment of staff to raise Mr Thomson’s profile in the electorate of Dobell did not require disclosure because they occurred before the date he was pre-selected as a candidate for the seat in 2007.