Reserved State Powers

The Reserved Powers Doctrine

In the first two decades of its existence, the High Court adopted a doctrine of Reserved State Powers " combined with "implied inter-governmental immunities". The essence of the first part of the doctrine was that grants of power to the Commonwealth in the Constitution should be read in a restrictive way so as to preserve as much autonomy as possible for the States. The essence of the second part of the doctrine was that the Commonwealth and States were immune to each other's laws, and could not mutually regulate each other's governmental apparatus: for instance, they could not tax the wages of each other's employees, or force each other's employees to submit to compulsory industrial arbitration.

There was little basis in the text of the Constitution for this doctrine, although the judges who developed it had all been active members of the Constitutional Convention s, and believed that it was implied in the nature of Federalism
itself.

Doctrine Abandoned in 1920 Engineer's Case

The doctrine was swept away in the 1920 decision in the Engineer’s Case (after changes in the composition of the Court). The Court now insisted on adhering only to the language of the constitutional text, read as a whole, in its natural sense, and in light of the circumstances in which it was made: there was to be no reading in of implications by reference to the presumed intentions of the framers. In particular, since there is no mention of "reserved State powers", only one express inter-governmental immunity (regarding property taxes: section 114), and an express provision asserting the superiority of valid Commonwealth laws over inconsistent State laws (section 109), there was no longer any room for the doctrine previously asserted in favour
of the States.

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Reserved State Powers