The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective

Jongcheol Kim

judicial bodies. The references can be often derived from explicit texts in the 

constitution, while some can be from unwritten parts of the constitution. This 

difference of references may have some substantive meanings, but it should 

not be exaggerated. What, in reality, should guide constitutional discourse is 

not the appearance of the constitution, but the ideal overarching the consti-

tution as a whole. From some case studies in the context of Korean constitu-

tional adjudication, this argument has been proved true. What is important 

is that all the constitutional actors participating in constitutional dialogue 

designed or envisaged by the ideal of constitutional democracy are to abide by 

the limitation the constitution imposes, regardless of the appearance of those 

references, visible or invisible. At the same time, it is also noteworthy to rec-

ognize that they perform its constitutionally designated functions providently, 

consistently, and persuasively within such limitations. Constitutional adjudi-

cators are not an exception to this proposition, but should be leading actors to 

provide a role model for other actors.

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Constitutional implications play a significant part in many important aspects 

of Australian constitutional law. For instance, under the Boilermakers’ princi-

ple, the High Court has recognised an implication protecting the separation 

of federal judicial power from non-judicial power; under the Kable principle 

this has been extended to protect the institutional integrity of state courts. 

The Court has recognised implied principles protecting states as bodies poli-

tic under the Melbourne Corporation doctrine, and the Commonwealth and 

its powers under the Cigamatic doctrine. The Court has recognised implied 

guarantees of freedom of political communication and universal access to the 

franchise. Most recently, in the protection of the federal system and responsi-

ble government, the Court has articulated an extra-textual constitutional lim-

itation on the Commonwealth’s executive power to spend and contract in the 

absence of explicit statutory authorisation.

Implications are thus critical to the shape of doctrines that protect funda-

mental constitutional structures in Australia – the separation of powers, feder-

alism, political democracy and responsible government – and are thus critical 

to day-to-day government practice in a range of important policy areas. Yet, 

outside of these protections for the structural features of the Constitution, in 

the context of non-politically associated individual rights, Australian constitu-

tional culture remains deeply suspicious of most forms of implication. Our 

conception of individual rights in this context is, of course, itself contestable: 

on one view, a constitutional ‘right’ exists wherever the Court upholds an indi-

vidual’s constitutional claim.

1

 The view we take, however, is that at least in this 

context the concept of a constitutional right is best understood as referring to 

1 

See e.g., W. N. Hohfeld, ‘Fundamental Legal Conceptions: As Applies in Judicial Reasoning’ 

(1917) 26 Yale Law Journal 710. See also discussion in Frederick Schauer, ‘The Generality of 

Rights’ (2000) 6 Legal Theory 323, 328.

12

Constitutional Implications in Australia

Explaining the Structure – Rights Dualism

Rosalind Dixon and Gabrielle Appleby

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