The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective



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The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective by Rosalind Dixon (editor), Adrienne Stone (editor) (z-lib.org)

McCulloch v. Maryland, note 71, 417.

74 


Sinnott-Armstrong, Supra note 57, 231.


128 

Jeffrey Goldsworthy

Similarly, if the vindication of an express right truly depends on the protec-

tion of some incidental right, it will often be plausible to construe the former 

as encompassing the latter. For example, if people have a right to vote in an 

election but for practical reasons are able to vote only at a particular polling 

station, the right would surely be construed as forbidding any attempt to pre-

vent them from doing so.

But there is a caveat. Requests, instructions and rules should not be regarded 

as implicitly authorising any actions at all that might turn out to be necessary 

to comply with them. To the contrary, they are often subject to implicit qual-

ifications that impose side constraints on efforts at compliance. In the case of 

my son being asked to bring some mustard to the table, if he were to discover 

that we had run out of mustard, he should not regard my request as implicitly 

authorising him to break into our neighbours’ house and steal theirs or (if 

he has no driver’s licence) to drive illegally to a shop in order to buy some 

mustard. In these circumstances, any argument that my request implicitly 

authorises whatever is necessary to comply with it would be met by a much 

stronger argument that it is implicitly subject to side constraints inherent in 

background assumptions prohibiting burglary and other unlawful actions.

75

 In 



principle, the same should be true of efforts to implement laws. If it turns out 

that a law simply cannot be effectively implemented without violating some 

side constraint that the lawmaker would undoubtedly not have wanted to be 

violated, then the lawmaker has unintentionally created a dilemma that must 

be resolved in some other way, involving rectifying interpretation.

It is easy to multiply examples of instructions and rules whose meaning 

arguably depends partly on implicit side constraints that are so obvious they 

may not even be noticed.

76

 Consider Wittgenstein’s famous example of some-



one asked to ‘play a game with the children’.

77

 The meaning of the request 



is determined partly by conventional notions of what games are suitable for 

children; the request is therefore not properly complied with if the children 

are introduced to an adults-only game involving, say, sex or Russian roulette. 

75 


For this reason, Sinnott-Armstrong – who originated this example – was wrong to discount the 

relevance of original intent or meaning in resolving it: see Sinnott-Armstrong, Supra note 57, 

232. See also MacCallum’s ashtray example, Supra note 79.

76 


J. Searle, ‘Literal Meaning’, in his Expression and Meaning, Studies in the Theory of Speech 

Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 117, 133. See also his J. Searle ‘The Back-

ground of Meaning’, in J. Searle, F.  Kiefer and M. Bierwisch (eds.), Speech Act Theory and 



Pragmatics (Holland: Reidel, 1980), 221, and J. Searle Intentionality: An Essay in the Philoso-

phy of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 145–8.

77 


L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, para. 70.


 

The Implicit and the Implied in a Written Constitution 

129


But that goes without saying.

78

 Another somewhat dated example involves an 



assistant being asked to ‘fetch all the ashtrays you can find’ for a meeting to 

be attended by many smokers.

79

 The assistant is obviously not supposed to rip 



ashtrays from walls they are attached to or steal them. The request is under-

stood in a context including implicit side constraints prohibiting damage to 

property and theft.

In all these examples, expressed requests, directives, rules or permissions are 

regarded as implicitly including unexpressed supplements or qualifications 

that seem necessary or at least appropriate in order to carry out the speaker’s 

purposes and are sufficiently obvious that they can be taken for granted. But 

how far can this form of reasoning be taken?

A perennial problem for judges arises when applying the express meaning of 

a law would have very undesirable and probably unintended consequences in 

unusual circumstances that the lawmaker apparently did not anticipate. Judges are 

reluctant to apply the express meaning, because the consequences seem not only 

unjust, but unjustified by due deference to the lawmaker’s authority, given that, 

had it anticipated those circumstances, it would almost certainly have taken steps 

to avoid those consequences. The judges have two alternative methods of avoiding 

them: (1) interpreting the law, through an act of clarifying interpretation, as sub-

ject to an implicit exception covering those circumstances; or (2) in effect amend-

ing the law by adding an exception to it through an act of rectifying interpretation.

Judges are somewhat reluctant openly to embrace the second alternative, 

because they have no constitutional authority to amend statutes or constitu-

tions except in very limited circumstances. But even those who most strongly 

deny the legitimacy of judge-made exceptions to statutory and constitutional 

laws concede that such laws may be subject to genuinely implicit exceptions 

or qualifications.

80

 Moreover, the first alternative often seems genuinely plau-



sible, as attested by the many legal theorists who have endorsed it.

81

Consider the following examples. A rule prohibits talking in a library; is it 



subject to an implicit exception that permits someone to warn patrons that 

a fire has broken out? And the problem is not confined to general rules. If 

78 

Perhaps the request is elliptical, meaning: ‘Play a [suitable] game with the children’. Or per-



haps, as Emerton suggests, the reference of the word ‘game’ varies with the context, and is 

determined partly by implicit assumptions: see P. Emerton, ‘Political Freedoms and Entitle-

ments in the Australian Constitution – An Example of Referential Intentions Yielding Unin-

tended Consequences’ (2010) 38 Federal Law Review 169, 175.

79 

G. MacCallum ‘Legislative Intent’, in R. Summers (ed.), Essays in Legal Philosophy (University  



of California Press, 1968) 237, 256–7.

80 


Scalia and Garner, Supra note 50, 93–111; the acknowledgement of implicit exceptions is at 

96–7.


81 

See notes 82–85.




130 


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