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What I always have wondered is where the act got its name. Out of all the acts passed in westminster, whose crazy idea was it to call this one the statute of westminster????
Article said
I don't know about the case of Canada, but in the case of Australia the above is incorrect. Australia has had the power to ammend its own consititution, without needing any approval from the UK parliament, ever since 1901, and has in fact done so on several occasions. The Statute of Westminister did provide, however, that the Commonwealth Parliament would not have the power under the Statute to ammend the Australian Constitution; but that was done to prevent it from circumventing the provisions on ammendment contained in the constitution, not to retain it as a power of the British Parliament. -- SJK
Treaty of Westminster
Edit of 23 May 2005 says "The Statute is sometimes referred to, especially in the former dominions, as the Treaty of Westminster." I've never heard this, it certainly isn't true in Australia, in my experience, and I'm not inclined to believe it. Can anyone cite a documented use of this terminology? -- Chris Bennett
It is true that in statute law the preamble is not binding. However, it seems that where the Statute of Westminster has been included as part of a codified constitution, as in Canada, it is binding as in the case of O'Donohue v. Her Majesty the Queen, Judge Rouleau dismissed O'Donohue's challenge on the strength of the Statute of Westminster's preamble. AndyL 8 July 2005 17:39 (UTC)
Either way, gbambino is wrong. AndyL 8 July 2005 17:54 (UTC)
"*Rouleau referred to the preamble of the 1867 Constitution Act."
In Clause 31 of his ruling he quotes the preamble to the Statute of Westminster.:
Rouleau thus treats the preamble as being leagally binding. AndyL 8 July 2005 18:09 (UTC)
I changed the article back because these changes seem unfocused, and perhaps not encyclopedic. I suggest working out the change here on the talk page and then editing the article itself. Peter Grey 8 July 2005 18:20 (UTC)\
That's fine. Gbambino initiated the changes by deleting something he shouldn't have deleted. I'm find with the status quo ante. AndyL 8 July 2005 18:23 (UTC)
I agree, and thus my proposed change is that the full text quoted above be removed from the article. It really has no relevance, aside from attempting to mislead readers into thinking Canada and Australia as subservient to the British (and, even more bizzarre, the New Zealand) Parliament. -- gbambino 15:29, 11 July 2005 (UTC) Surely it can only be equally bizarre? Peter Grey 20:34, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
Much better. Well done! -- gbambino 17:36, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
For those realms such as Belize, Jamacia, Barbadous etc- can the Statute of Westminster Act 1931 apply? The Statute was never amended. Astrotrain 19:26, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
"The Statute became domestic law within each of the other Commonwealth Realms after the patriation of the particular Realm's constitution, to the extent that it was not rendered obsolete by that process."
In which Commonwealth Realm has the Statute of Westminster been rendered useless? -- gbambino 15:01, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Onus? I'm simply asking a question, not launching an attack. I'm not aware of many of the subtle technicalities of law in various countries; thank you for explaining some about Australia.
However, is there not one key part of the Statute of Westminster which continues to have effect in every Realm? Namely, the preamble, which outlines: "it would be in accord with the established constitutional position of all the members of the Commonwealth in relation to one another that any alteration in the law touching the Succession to the Throne or the Royal Style and Titles shall hereafter require the assent as well of the Parliaments of all the Dominions as of the Parliament of the United Kingdom." It was referred to as recently as 2003, in the ruling of Ontario Superior Court Justice Rouleau on a challenge to the Act of Settlement within the Canadian Constitution, which also still contains the Statute of Westminster.
If the provision that a country's parliament cannot unilaterally alter the line of succession is still a functioning rule within each Realm, then, though some parts of the Statute have been rendered obsolete by subsequent legislation, the Statute is not itself obsolete (which I would think is a synonym for "useless"), even if the provision is only outlined in the preamble. -- gbambino 15:50, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
The Statute applied to multiple countries that were part of the British Empire, so why is there a table at the bottom that applies to Canada? I think it shouldn't be there, or every country that this applied to should be there.
I have removed the Canadian table as it is a point of inconsistency. Why have a table dedicated to just one realm? Either have them all or none. But I can tell that the Canadian table is just going to be added back in. I'm new to wikipedia so I don't know what to do about this. -- Parraluke ( talk) 17:56, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
OK, so why did the MacDonald government call it the "Statute of Westminster 1931?" Aren't all statutes passed by the British Parliament passed in Westminster? -- Mwalcoff 00:36, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
The MacDonald government ended with the death of Sir John A. MacDonald in the year 1887 ot 1888.
For example, in a referendum held in Western Australia in April 1933, 68% of voters voted for the state to leave the Commonwealth of Australia with the aim of becoming a separate Dominion within the British Empire. The state government sent a delegation to Westminster to cause the result to be enacted, but the British Parliament refused to intervene on the grounds that it was a matter for the Commonwealth of Australia.
Jackofoz - here is a comphrensive article answering your question ( if you haven't found out already ) http://www.law.mq.edu.au/html/MqLJ/Volume3/Vol3_Musgrave.pdf --- very interesting . Lejon ( talk) 10:33, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Residual powers over the constitution existed in relation to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In 1947, New Zealand adopted the Statute of Westminster and passed the New Zealand Constitution (request and consent) act. The UK parliament then passed the New Zealand Constitution (amendment) act in the same year, hence patriating the New Zealand constitution. No further acts of the British parliament were therefore ever needed in relation to amending the New Zealand constitution. New Zealand became effectively independent in 1947. The New Zealand Constitution act 1986 only involved the New Zealand parliament. This was in contrast to the Canada Act of 1982 and the Australia Act of 1986 which both required parallel legislation in the UK parliament. The New Zealand Constitution act of 1986 actually purported to repeal the very act of the UK parliament which had given New Zealand effective independence in the first place. It did so with the intent of obtaining an independence which already existed anyhow, and had it been effective would actually have had the reverse effect. As it was, it was ineffective, and New Zealand continued to be independent on the basis of the 1947 Statute of Westminster (Adoption) Act which had its authority in the 1931 Statute of Westminster act that was passed by the UK parliament. For a clarification of the issues relating to saving powers for the constitutions of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, see [1] David Tombe ( talk) 13:15, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
The article as it stands reports that the Irish Free State let 24 hours pass before recognising the abdication. Citation please - it was certainly not an Act of the Dáil (Parliament) [see http://www.acts.ie/en.toc.decade.html]. Would it have been a Statutory Instrument or similar? -- Red King ( talk) 20:23, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
UK-specific categories keep getting added to this article (most recently replacing other, less specific ones; i.e. "Category:Bilateral relations of Australia" to "Category:Australia-United Kingdom relations"). This is problematic, since the Statute of Westminster isn't relevant only to the UK's external affairs; it is to all the Commonwealth realms' external affairs with the other Commonwealth realms. The most concise and consistent way of dealing with this seems to be to place this article in all the relevant "Bilateral relations of [country]" categories, in which are sub-categories or articles about that country's relations with other Commonwealth countries (such as "Australia-United Kingdom relations", "Belize-United Kingdom relations", "New Zealand-United Kingdom relations", and all the other aforementioned UK-specific ones). -- Ħ MIESIANIACAL 20:40, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
The section "Australia" begins: "However, section nine of the Statute of Westminster allowed the Colonial Laws Validity Act 1865 to have continued application in the six Australian states and the Australian Capital Territory; this allowed the British parliament to continue to pass legislation concerning the states and territory ..." But s 9 mentions only the states. And, if the statement is correct for the ACT (which I doubt), presumably it would also be correct for the other territories, so that they too should be mentioned. Any objection to removing the words "and the Australian Capital Territory" and "and territory"? -- Wikiain ( talk) 01:18, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
Some tedious back- and- forth suggests a need for Talk: dialogue rather than edit summaries. Here's my take:
jnestorius( talk) 10:13, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
References to a common allegiance to the "crown" and the unity of the "crown", have been deleted by Wikiain as being outdated, and restored by me. These concepts are mentioned in the Statute and while the Crown in the Commonwealth Realms has evolved over time, it's shared aspect is still an aspect of the legislation which is the subject of this article. The Crown operates (or the Crowns operate) in sixteen different, distinct and separate jurisdictions and we can speak of sixteen distinct institutions. But it also has a shared character, which for clarity, should be explained in the context of the section in which the terms are used in the article. Gerard von Hebel ( talk) 00:56, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
The statement "largely sovereign" is confused - see sovereign state. A state is either sovereign or it is not: it is a rather binary status. For sovereignty a state must have "supremacy in the domestic policy and independence in the foreign one" and also note that "a sovereign state is neither dependent on nor subjected to any other power or state". Whilst a state can choose to follow the foreign policy of an external entity or another state (for example, the members of the European Union) if they have sovereignty they can repudiate that position. A non-sovereign state cannot (for example, the states of the United States).
The Statute of Westminster made the Dominion parliaments fully the masters of their own destiny. Whilst many of them maintained adherence to the United Kingdom's structures for decades afterwards, from the passing of the Statute they had the right to go their own way entirely by their own volition. That is sovereignty. If they had in any way not had that right - if any portion had been reserved - they would not have.
In summary:
Mauls ( talk) 09:59, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
Constitutional Law 1.01 in England and Wales (Scots doctrine is a bit different) always used to be that Parliament is omni-competent, and can in principle pass pretty much any law it likes, even (classic textbook example) forbidding Frenchmen to smoke on the streets of Paris. Enforcing it would be a different matter, of course.
I don't really have a source to hand, but for many years the Statute of Westminster used to be discussed in constitutional law textbooks in the context of whether Parliament could limit its own jurisdiction, or whether it was - in the realms of legal metaphysics - simply an act of voluntary self-restraint (i.e. Parliament could still in theory vote requiring Canadians to fly the Union Jack instead of the Maple Leaf - it would be perfectly valid law in the UK, but they just wouldn't be able to enforce it in Canada). Paulturtle ( talk) 06:56, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
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A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on December 11, 2004, December 11, 2005, December 11, 2006, December 11, 2007, and December 11, 2008. |
What I always have wondered is where the act got its name. Out of all the acts passed in westminster, whose crazy idea was it to call this one the statute of westminster????
Article said
I don't know about the case of Canada, but in the case of Australia the above is incorrect. Australia has had the power to ammend its own consititution, without needing any approval from the UK parliament, ever since 1901, and has in fact done so on several occasions. The Statute of Westminister did provide, however, that the Commonwealth Parliament would not have the power under the Statute to ammend the Australian Constitution; but that was done to prevent it from circumventing the provisions on ammendment contained in the constitution, not to retain it as a power of the British Parliament. -- SJK
Treaty of Westminster
Edit of 23 May 2005 says "The Statute is sometimes referred to, especially in the former dominions, as the Treaty of Westminster." I've never heard this, it certainly isn't true in Australia, in my experience, and I'm not inclined to believe it. Can anyone cite a documented use of this terminology? -- Chris Bennett
It is true that in statute law the preamble is not binding. However, it seems that where the Statute of Westminster has been included as part of a codified constitution, as in Canada, it is binding as in the case of O'Donohue v. Her Majesty the Queen, Judge Rouleau dismissed O'Donohue's challenge on the strength of the Statute of Westminster's preamble. AndyL 8 July 2005 17:39 (UTC)
Either way, gbambino is wrong. AndyL 8 July 2005 17:54 (UTC)
"*Rouleau referred to the preamble of the 1867 Constitution Act."
In Clause 31 of his ruling he quotes the preamble to the Statute of Westminster.:
Rouleau thus treats the preamble as being leagally binding. AndyL 8 July 2005 18:09 (UTC)
I changed the article back because these changes seem unfocused, and perhaps not encyclopedic. I suggest working out the change here on the talk page and then editing the article itself. Peter Grey 8 July 2005 18:20 (UTC)\
That's fine. Gbambino initiated the changes by deleting something he shouldn't have deleted. I'm find with the status quo ante. AndyL 8 July 2005 18:23 (UTC)
I agree, and thus my proposed change is that the full text quoted above be removed from the article. It really has no relevance, aside from attempting to mislead readers into thinking Canada and Australia as subservient to the British (and, even more bizzarre, the New Zealand) Parliament. -- gbambino 15:29, 11 July 2005 (UTC) Surely it can only be equally bizarre? Peter Grey 20:34, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
Much better. Well done! -- gbambino 17:36, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
For those realms such as Belize, Jamacia, Barbadous etc- can the Statute of Westminster Act 1931 apply? The Statute was never amended. Astrotrain 19:26, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
"The Statute became domestic law within each of the other Commonwealth Realms after the patriation of the particular Realm's constitution, to the extent that it was not rendered obsolete by that process."
In which Commonwealth Realm has the Statute of Westminster been rendered useless? -- gbambino 15:01, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Onus? I'm simply asking a question, not launching an attack. I'm not aware of many of the subtle technicalities of law in various countries; thank you for explaining some about Australia.
However, is there not one key part of the Statute of Westminster which continues to have effect in every Realm? Namely, the preamble, which outlines: "it would be in accord with the established constitutional position of all the members of the Commonwealth in relation to one another that any alteration in the law touching the Succession to the Throne or the Royal Style and Titles shall hereafter require the assent as well of the Parliaments of all the Dominions as of the Parliament of the United Kingdom." It was referred to as recently as 2003, in the ruling of Ontario Superior Court Justice Rouleau on a challenge to the Act of Settlement within the Canadian Constitution, which also still contains the Statute of Westminster.
If the provision that a country's parliament cannot unilaterally alter the line of succession is still a functioning rule within each Realm, then, though some parts of the Statute have been rendered obsolete by subsequent legislation, the Statute is not itself obsolete (which I would think is a synonym for "useless"), even if the provision is only outlined in the preamble. -- gbambino 15:50, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
The Statute applied to multiple countries that were part of the British Empire, so why is there a table at the bottom that applies to Canada? I think it shouldn't be there, or every country that this applied to should be there.
I have removed the Canadian table as it is a point of inconsistency. Why have a table dedicated to just one realm? Either have them all or none. But I can tell that the Canadian table is just going to be added back in. I'm new to wikipedia so I don't know what to do about this. -- Parraluke ( talk) 17:56, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
OK, so why did the MacDonald government call it the "Statute of Westminster 1931?" Aren't all statutes passed by the British Parliament passed in Westminster? -- Mwalcoff 00:36, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
The MacDonald government ended with the death of Sir John A. MacDonald in the year 1887 ot 1888.
For example, in a referendum held in Western Australia in April 1933, 68% of voters voted for the state to leave the Commonwealth of Australia with the aim of becoming a separate Dominion within the British Empire. The state government sent a delegation to Westminster to cause the result to be enacted, but the British Parliament refused to intervene on the grounds that it was a matter for the Commonwealth of Australia.
Jackofoz - here is a comphrensive article answering your question ( if you haven't found out already ) http://www.law.mq.edu.au/html/MqLJ/Volume3/Vol3_Musgrave.pdf --- very interesting . Lejon ( talk) 10:33, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Residual powers over the constitution existed in relation to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In 1947, New Zealand adopted the Statute of Westminster and passed the New Zealand Constitution (request and consent) act. The UK parliament then passed the New Zealand Constitution (amendment) act in the same year, hence patriating the New Zealand constitution. No further acts of the British parliament were therefore ever needed in relation to amending the New Zealand constitution. New Zealand became effectively independent in 1947. The New Zealand Constitution act 1986 only involved the New Zealand parliament. This was in contrast to the Canada Act of 1982 and the Australia Act of 1986 which both required parallel legislation in the UK parliament. The New Zealand Constitution act of 1986 actually purported to repeal the very act of the UK parliament which had given New Zealand effective independence in the first place. It did so with the intent of obtaining an independence which already existed anyhow, and had it been effective would actually have had the reverse effect. As it was, it was ineffective, and New Zealand continued to be independent on the basis of the 1947 Statute of Westminster (Adoption) Act which had its authority in the 1931 Statute of Westminster act that was passed by the UK parliament. For a clarification of the issues relating to saving powers for the constitutions of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, see [1] David Tombe ( talk) 13:15, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
The article as it stands reports that the Irish Free State let 24 hours pass before recognising the abdication. Citation please - it was certainly not an Act of the Dáil (Parliament) [see http://www.acts.ie/en.toc.decade.html]. Would it have been a Statutory Instrument or similar? -- Red King ( talk) 20:23, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
UK-specific categories keep getting added to this article (most recently replacing other, less specific ones; i.e. "Category:Bilateral relations of Australia" to "Category:Australia-United Kingdom relations"). This is problematic, since the Statute of Westminster isn't relevant only to the UK's external affairs; it is to all the Commonwealth realms' external affairs with the other Commonwealth realms. The most concise and consistent way of dealing with this seems to be to place this article in all the relevant "Bilateral relations of [country]" categories, in which are sub-categories or articles about that country's relations with other Commonwealth countries (such as "Australia-United Kingdom relations", "Belize-United Kingdom relations", "New Zealand-United Kingdom relations", and all the other aforementioned UK-specific ones). -- Ħ MIESIANIACAL 20:40, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
The section "Australia" begins: "However, section nine of the Statute of Westminster allowed the Colonial Laws Validity Act 1865 to have continued application in the six Australian states and the Australian Capital Territory; this allowed the British parliament to continue to pass legislation concerning the states and territory ..." But s 9 mentions only the states. And, if the statement is correct for the ACT (which I doubt), presumably it would also be correct for the other territories, so that they too should be mentioned. Any objection to removing the words "and the Australian Capital Territory" and "and territory"? -- Wikiain ( talk) 01:18, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
Some tedious back- and- forth suggests a need for Talk: dialogue rather than edit summaries. Here's my take:
jnestorius( talk) 10:13, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
References to a common allegiance to the "crown" and the unity of the "crown", have been deleted by Wikiain as being outdated, and restored by me. These concepts are mentioned in the Statute and while the Crown in the Commonwealth Realms has evolved over time, it's shared aspect is still an aspect of the legislation which is the subject of this article. The Crown operates (or the Crowns operate) in sixteen different, distinct and separate jurisdictions and we can speak of sixteen distinct institutions. But it also has a shared character, which for clarity, should be explained in the context of the section in which the terms are used in the article. Gerard von Hebel ( talk) 00:56, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
The statement "largely sovereign" is confused - see sovereign state. A state is either sovereign or it is not: it is a rather binary status. For sovereignty a state must have "supremacy in the domestic policy and independence in the foreign one" and also note that "a sovereign state is neither dependent on nor subjected to any other power or state". Whilst a state can choose to follow the foreign policy of an external entity or another state (for example, the members of the European Union) if they have sovereignty they can repudiate that position. A non-sovereign state cannot (for example, the states of the United States).
The Statute of Westminster made the Dominion parliaments fully the masters of their own destiny. Whilst many of them maintained adherence to the United Kingdom's structures for decades afterwards, from the passing of the Statute they had the right to go their own way entirely by their own volition. That is sovereignty. If they had in any way not had that right - if any portion had been reserved - they would not have.
In summary:
Mauls ( talk) 09:59, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
Constitutional Law 1.01 in England and Wales (Scots doctrine is a bit different) always used to be that Parliament is omni-competent, and can in principle pass pretty much any law it likes, even (classic textbook example) forbidding Frenchmen to smoke on the streets of Paris. Enforcing it would be a different matter, of course.
I don't really have a source to hand, but for many years the Statute of Westminster used to be discussed in constitutional law textbooks in the context of whether Parliament could limit its own jurisdiction, or whether it was - in the realms of legal metaphysics - simply an act of voluntary self-restraint (i.e. Parliament could still in theory vote requiring Canadians to fly the Union Jack instead of the Maple Leaf - it would be perfectly valid law in the UK, but they just wouldn't be able to enforce it in Canada). Paulturtle ( talk) 06:56, 5 November 2020 (UTC)