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)

The Implicit and the Implied in a Written Constitution 

135


a standard of clarity – a requirement of obviousness – that is higher than 

expected in everyday discourse, in order to guard against the first kind of 

error.

105


 That might also have the salutary effect of motivating lawmakers and 

their drafters to think more carefully about what they need to make explicit in 

order to avoid misunderstanding.

4.5.  Rectifying Interpretation and Fabricated Implications

Relying on the notion of implicit assumptions to avoid the undesirable con-

sequences of express meanings in unusual circumstances has been criticised 

for unrealistically attributing too much to the meaning, or communicated 

content, of utterances.

106

 If that criticism is sound, then to avoid those con-



sequences judges would have to act creatively, in effect amending statutory 

and constitutional provisions by inserting into them qualifications that the 

lawmaker failed to include. This used to be called ‘equitable interpretation’, 

and is still advocated today.

107

 Judges may sometimes be justified in acting as 



the lawmaker’s ‘faithful agents’, expanding or contracting the meaning of the 

law in order to better give effect to the lawmaker’s purposes and values.

Because judges are reluctant openly to amend statutes and constitutions, 

they sometimes speak of ‘reading into’ or ‘implying into’ them qualifications 

that are ‘necessary’ to fulfil the lawmaker’s objectives. This returns us to a 

distinction drawn at the outset of this chapter. When courts ascribe an impli-

cation to a constitution, are they always purporting to discover a genuine  

one, which ordinary linguistic principles reveal the constitution to already 

include? Or are they sometimes relying on distinctively legal interpretive prin-

ciples, which justify the insertion of a fabricated implication – one that is 

really new – into the constitution?

In common law jurisdictions, lawyers routinely use idiosyncratic legal ter-

minology that describes terms being ‘implied into’ or ‘read into’ legal texts, 

105 


Ibid.

106 


See e.g., S. Soames, ‘Interpreting Legal Texts: What Is, and What Is Not, Special about the 

Law’, in Philosophical Essays, Vol 1, Natural Language: What It Means and How We Use It 

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 403, 415–18; ‘What Vagueness and Inconsistency 

Tell Us about Interpretation’, in A.  Marmor and S.  Soames (eds.), Philosophical Foundations 



of Language in the Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 31, 46–51.

107 


See e.g., Ekins, Supra note 25, 275–84; J. Evans, ‘A Brief History of Equitable Interpretation in 

the Common Law System’ in T.  Campbell and J. Goldsworthy, Legal Interpretation in Demo-



cratic States (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 67; J.  Evans, ‘Reading Down Statutes’, in R. Bigwood 

(ed.), The Statute: Making and Meaning (Wellington: LexisNexis, 2004), 123.




136 

Jeffrey Goldsworthy

and judges ‘making implications’ by ‘implying’ legal powers or legal limits.

108

 

This is idiosyncratic because, in ordinary English, terms that are genuinely 



implied by a text are inferred from it, and implications are made by the author 

of a text, not by its reader or interpreter. To speak of terms being implied into 

or read into a text by an interpreter is to use oxymoronic expressions that, in 

trying to have it both ways, defy ordinary English.

109

It might be argued that these peculiar legal expressions are merely conven-



ient lawyers’ shorthand to describe the discovery of genuine implications. But 

this seems implausible, because in ordinary English it is only slightly more 

convenient (quicker and easier) to say (incorrectly) that a term ‘was implied 

into’ a text, rather than (correctly) that it was ‘found to be implied by’ the text. 

The best explanation is that these idiosyncratic legal expressions function as 

euphemisms, blurring the distinction between the discovery of genuine impli-

cations and the insertion of fabricated ones.

110


 It seems that lawyers are often 

more or less aware that judges are really inserting terms into legal texts in order 

to correct or improve them, but are reluctant openly to say so.

Some Australian judges have refused to concede this. Windeyer J disap-

proved of the expression ‘making implications’, when he said: ‘I would pre-

fer not to say “making implications”, because our avowed task is simply the 

revealing or uncovering of implications that are already there’.

111


 In McGinty

Brennan CJ agreed: ‘Implications are not devised by the judiciary; they exist 

in the text and structure of the Constitution and are revealed or uncovered 

by judicial exegesis’.

112

 They were insisting that implications must be genuine, 



not fabricated.

Although legal scholars and judges occasionally question it, a test that has 

long been commonly used to identify implications in legal instruments is 

that they must be ‘necessary’.

113

 But two different kinds of ‘necessity’ can be 



found in British and Australian case law on implications, whether statutory or 

108 



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