this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2024
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King Charles won’t stand in the way if ‘Australia wants to become a republic’ (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 month ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world
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Charles said to be adopting ‘anti-confrontational approach’ to republican campaigners before visit

King Charles has said he will not stand in the way if Australia wishes to replace him as the country's head of state, it has been reported.

Ahead of his visit later this month, the king is said to be adopting an "anti-confrontational approach" to Australian republican campaigners, the Daily Mail reported.

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[–] bjorney@lemmy.ca 37 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Abolishing the monarchy would involve rewriting the constitution - if that was happening every province would want to slip in their own terms - Quebec would want specific French language rights and autonomy and if Quebec got their way Alberta would want something similar. We successfully altered the constitution back in 1982 - it took 2 years and the country almost blew up over it.

Basically it would be a total shit show. Considering the impact the monarchy has on our day to day life (basically zero) it's easier to just let sleeping dogs lie

[–] cygnus@lemmy.ca 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hell, Quebec still to this day hasn't ratified the 1982 update. They kept using the notwithstanding clause for years until the supreme court unilaterally decided that since QC is part of Canada, the constitution applies there in practice despite them not signing it.

[–] tal 6 points 1 month ago

Man, I didn't even think about Quebec.

Some treaties that the French sign have had them require a French version and that the French version be equally-binding. I imagine that this makes any form of translation difference exciting. Is this the case for Quebec?

searches

Apparently so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_Act,_1982

English and French versions

Section 56 of the Act provides that the parts of the Constitution that were enacted in English and French are equally authoritative, and section 57 adds that the English and French versions of the Constitution Act, 1982 itself are equal. Section 57 is akin section 18 of the Charter, which provides that English and French versions of federal and New Brunswick statutes are equal.[20] The Supreme Court has interpreted section 133 of the Constitution Act, 1867 and section 23 of the Manitoba Act, 1870 to mean that the English and French versions of federal, Quebec and Manitoba statutes are equal.[21][22]

Despite sections 56 and 57, significant portions of the Constitution of Canada were only enacted in English and even if there exist unofficial French translations, their English versions alone have force of law. To address this problem, section 55 requires that the federal Minister of Justice prepare "a French version of the…Constitution of Canada as expeditiously as possible." The Minister of Justice established a French Constitution Drafting Committee in 1984, which prepared French versions of the Constitution, and presented them to the Minister in 1990.[citation needed]

Section 55 also requires that "when any portion thereof sufficient to warrant action being taken has been so prepared, it shall but put forward for enactment by proclamation issued by the Governor General under the Great Seal of Canada pursuant to the procedure then applicable to an amendment of the same provisions of the Constitution of Canada." No action has been taken to put forward the French version for enactment. The reference to a proclamation by the Governor-General implies that some combination of the general, unanimity and special arrangements procedures would be required to enact the French version.[citation needed] Although the intention was presumably that the government of Canada would do so by introducing an amendment resolution in the House of Commons,[citation needed] a Senator or a provincial government could presumably do so since, under section 46, such amendments "may be initiated either by the Senate or the House of Commons or by the legislative assembly of a province".

[–] tal 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Additional wrinkle: my understanding is that the question of what parts of Canadian law are part of the constitution and what are not is an active legal question being gradually resolved by courts.

The UK doesn't have any formal constitution, as the bar for Parliament to change anything it wants is the same -- a simple majority.

Canada's legal system was originally structured in a similar way, and did not have an explicit constitution written. When it became independent, part of the process indicated that some of that body of law was part of the constitution. And in present-day Canada, as in the US, it does matter whether a piece of law is part of the constitution, as the constitution has a different legal status from ordinary federal law.

But because the division is not presently fully-defined, I imagine that a rewrite would be a pretty substantial task, even above what would typically be the case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_constitutional_documents

After patriation, the methods of constitutional entrenchment are:

  • specific mention as a constitutional document in section 52(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982;

  • amendments to constitutional documents using the amending formula in Part V the Constitution Act, 1982;

  • in some cases, reference by an entrenched document;

  • ruling by a court that a practice is part of Canada's unwritten constitution; or

  • judicial interpretation of constitutional provisions.

The list of documents for the first two methods is well-established. For the next two, however, there is debate about which documents, or which parts of those documents, are included in the constitution. In some cases, the Supreme Court of Canada has made definitive rulings regarding whether a given documents forms part of the constitution, but in many cases the question is still unclear.

On the up side, I suppose that doing such a rewrite would clear this up. On the down side, I imagine that an actual rewrite would be an unholy mess from a legal standpoint, as it'd have to resolve what the constitution is at one go.

[–] hddsx@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Just touching on point, doesn’t the UK not have a constitution because it’s basically whatever the Monarch says? And there is basically an agreement to off on whatever the MPs decide because otherwise they would officially overthrow the monarch

[–] tal 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

doesn’t the UK not have a constitution because it’s basically whatever the Monarch says?

No. In the 2024 British system of government, the monarch has essentially no power. The upper house of the bicameral legislature, the House of Lords, has very little power.

Virtually all power is wielded by whoever controls a simple majority in the House of Commons, the lower house. They can do anything (short of limiting what future Parliaments can do). Rewrite any law, whatever.

My understanding is that this is largely a result of having a system constructed in an aristocratic period, and shifts in power occurring, but the system of government not being restructured.

In, say, the US, the constitution limits and specifies the powers of government. It places a set of constraints on what Congress and other bodies can do.

The British system evolved from a situation where the aristocrats were represented in the House of Lords, the monarch was his own thing, and the rest of the public in the House of Commons.

Part of the transition over time was to limit the power that the king had. The Magna Carta constrains what the king can do, shifted away from an absolute monarchy. In that sense, the UK is nominally a constitutional monarchy.

But since the king has no real power today, power has shifted from the monarch, the written restrictions on his power are essentially meaningless.

Over time, the aristocracy also lost power. The House of Lords lost most powers it has, and today has very little actual power -- I believe that perhaps the most-notable is the ability to delay legislation for a period of time.

Where basically all the power has concentrated is in the House of Commons.

And that has no real restriction on it. The Magna Carta doesn't restrict Parliament. Parliament has modified text from the Magna Carta with a simple majority before.

There is no power of judicial review over the legislature on the UK -- laws Parliament passes cannot be ruled unconstitutional. The executive is subject to judicial review -- there were some notable UK Supreme Court cases in the part few years relating to the actions of the prime minister. But the legislature is not -- the judiciary cannot rule a law passed by Parliament to be unconstitutional.

I once read something calling the UK an "absolute republic". I think that that's probably a much-more-apt description for the state of affairs in 2024 than its official designation as a constitutional monarchy. The UK, as it exists in 2024, isn't run by a monarch whose powers are limited by a constitution. It's run by a simoel majority in the lower house of a legislature who have no real limitations on their powers.

Not only that, but the one great convention is that Parliament cannot be bound. So Parliament cannot go write a constitution and then have it bind future Parliaments. That future Parliament could rewrite it as easily as they could do anything else, with a simple majority.

My belief -- and this is me talking here, not some British constitutional law expert -- is that the plan had been to move the UK to something that looked more like a conventional, constitutional republic by way of its EU membership, by some fancy legal and political footwork. If the UK signs onto a treaty, then it cannot do something against that treaty without violating the treaty. Parliament can still, perfectly legally under UK law, instruct the UK to violate treaties. But that would have consequences with the rest of the EU, and there would come a point in political integration where being in trouble with the EU would be unthinkable, so the UK would have become de facto a constitutional republic (or part of a constitutional republic).

If that was indeed the plan, I'd say that it was actually quite impressive -- the UK has a very elderly system of government that has, over time, managed to transform itself into very different forms, de facto without revolution or an official break with the past system by kinda kludging things, and some elaborate legal reasoning. This would have added another transformation.

But with Brexit, I suppose that that's off the table, at least for some time.

And there is basically an agreement to off on whatever the MPs decide because otherwise they would officially overthrow the monarch

Sort of. There are a lot of things that are formally done by the King by way of the King-in-Parliament, where British sovereignty is theoretically vested, is the "ultimate power" in the legal system, the way the US Constitution is in the US. But in practice, the King doesn't really have a choice as to whether to do them or not, and he'd basically get ignored if he objected, absent some sort of real question as to the legitimacy of Parliament acting (e.g. if there was a dispute over election fraud determining control of the House of Commons, I expect the King's voice might bear weight). It's really the Parliament, and within Parliament, the House of Commons that holds political power today.

Also, one last note on the British system of government, as to your comment:

UK not have a constitution

So, personally, I'd agree with you here. The British don't have a constitution, or at least not one with meaningful effect aside from other British law, aside from maybe the convention that Parliament cannot bind future Parliaments. But that isn't the British legal view of things. Their take is that they have an uncodified constitution, that many different (not always specified) documents and traditions make up their constitution. My take is basically "well, in what functional way does that differ from not having a constitution"? But in the name of completeness, just wanted to keep things correct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom

But even if you adopt the British take on this, whether or not something is part of the constitution or just regular law becomes essentially an academic question, because there is no special status that constitutional law holds relative to anything else.

But in Canada, there is a difference between law that is part of the constitution and all other law, so that becomes suddenly a real and meaningful distinction.