The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective

Jeffrey Goldsworthy

and ‘manner’ (be clear, unambiguous, brief and orderly).

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 When the literal 

meaning of an uttered sentence is incomplete, or absurd – as in the previous 

examples – we nevertheless assume that the speaker or author was attempting 

to communicate something helpful, and complied with the principle of quan-

tity (say no more than enough to be informative) and manner (be brief) by 

omitting what in the circumstances was so obvious that we would understand 

it to be taken for granted.

Some ellipses are apparent not because of logical incompleteness or absurd-

ity, but because of what we infer from contextual evidence of the lawmaker’s 

probable intended meaning. For example, Australian lawyers now understand 

the intended meaning of s. 71 of the Constitution to be (something like): ‘The 

judicial power of the Commonwealth shall be vested [exclusively] in . . . the 

High Court of Australia, and in such other federal courts as the Parliament 

creates [etc.]’.

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 Although this is commonly regarded as an implication, it is 

arguably expressed (as in the previous example) because the omitted word is 

conveyed by ellipsis. Similarly in the United States, it has been argued that the 

powers given to Congress by Article 1, Section 8 – and the commerce power 

in particular – were intended to be exclusive, even though that word was  

not used.

36

Other Australian examples of constitutional ellipses could be provided.

37

 

In statutory interpretation, the presumptions that statutes operate territorially 

and prospectively, may be regarded as filling ellipses. When these presump-

tions are applied, ‘It shall be an offence to x’ is interpreted as meaning ‘It shall 

be an offence [from now on] to x [in this jurisdiction]’. Such presumptions 

are, of course, defeasible: they are subject to positive evidence of a contrary 

legislative intention.

In R v. Young, Spigelman CJ said of statutes:

In order to construe the words actually used by Parliament, it is sometimes 

necessary to give them an effect as if they contained additional words. This is 

34 

These are Grice’s four ‘maxims of conversation’; his ‘neo-Gricean’ successors have proposed 

refined and simplified versions of his theory. For a brief overview, see R.  Carston, ‘Legal Texts 

and Canons of Construction: A View from Current Pragmatic Theory’, in M. Freeman and 

 

F. Smith (eds.), Law and Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013), 8.

35 

NSW v. Commonwealth (the Wheat case) (1915) 20 CLR 54; Waterside Workers’ Federation of 

Australia v. JW Alexander (1918) 25 CLR 434.

36 

See B. Friedman and D. T. Deacon, ‘A Course Unbroken: The Constitutional Legitimacy of 

the Dormant Commerce Clause’ (2011) 97 Virginia Law Review 1877, 1905–28.

37 

E.g., the phrase ‘prevented . . . from voting’ was interpreted by the High Court, relying on tex-

tual and contextual evidence of the lawmakers’ communicative intentions, as meaning (some-

thing like) ‘prevented . . . from exercising a right to vote’, the right having to be found elsewhere 

in the Constitution: R v. Pearson; ex parte Sipka (1983) 152 CLR 254, 278.

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The Implicit and the Implied in a Written Constitution 

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not, however, to introduce words into the Act. This involves the construction 

of the words actually used.

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This is an accurate description of how ellipses are (often unconsciously) ‘filled 

in’ by the interpreter. Paradoxically, what we regard as expressed depends 

partly on content that is inexplicit. But, as noted by the Victorian Court of 

Appeal in DPP v. Leys, Australian courts have sometimes ‘read words into’ 

statutes in ways going well beyond this.

39

 In doing so they have either been 

ascertaining genuine implications or creating fabricated ones.

40

 I now turn to 

genuine implications.

4.4.  Contextual Enrichment and Implied Meaning