The constitutional jurisprudence of the High Court of Australia : legalism, realism, pragmatism, judicial power and the Dixon, Mason and Gleeson eras

Abstract

"The thesis of this dissertation is that the Gleeson High Court is a largely a-theoretical Court, in that the judicial decisions of the Court are characterised by a low-level of abstraction, and the Gleeson Court does not theorise at length about the reasons for adopting a particular judicial approach. This approach distinguishes the Gleeson Court from the realist based jurisprudence of the Mason Court, which articulated the relevance of legal theory and tended to make statements of wide legal principle. The approach of the Gleeson Court also diverges from Dixonian legalism, which the analysis presented in this thesis will establish is a theoretical form of legalism." --p. 4.