Janina Boughey

When a government official tells you to do something, the instruction carries significantly more weight than when another person, without the cloak of government authority, issues the same instruction. If I tell a stranger not to smoke in a public place, they are very unlikely to stop smoking. For although I may be right about the harmful effects of their habit, I have no authority (at least in that context). But if the government puts up a ‘no smoking’ sign, or if a uniformed police officer, or, frankly, anyone in an official government uniform with perceived authority in the situation—such as a lifeguard on a beach or firefighter in the vicinity of a fire—tells a person to stop smoking, a fair number of people will obey. Certainly not all. But many, many more than if an ordinary member of the public issues the same command. This is so irrespective of whether the government official issuing the direction has actual legal authority to do so. Whether or not there is a law prohibiting smoking at that place, if the person issuing the order is perceived to have legal authority, then they are, in practice, exercising their special powers as a government official. And they ought to be treated as such and subject to public law accountability for the way they do so.

Lisa Burton Crawford

Recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) seem to have thrown the administrative state into crisis. A suite of recent cases have limited executive power in important ways—for example, by requiring executive action to be authorised by far more detailed legislation than has previously been required, or preventing executive agencies from performing certain functions that they have been allowed to in the past. These include the momentous decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo, 603 US ___ (2024) — in which the SCOTUS effectively overturned the doctrine of Chevron deference.

Why should Australian public lawyers be interested in these developments? What light do they cast on our own legal system, and its particular strengths and pathologies? This post explores these issues, beginning with the complex legislative framework that sustains administrative government here.

Harry Sanderson

A majority of the United States Supreme Court in June abolished Chevron deference—a doctrine which had been a cornerstone of US administrative law for 40 years. The decision was long-anticipated, but is likely to be divisive. This post explains the Court’s reasoning in Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo, 603 US ___ (2024) and some of its possible implications for US and Australian administrative law.