This book presents a detailed contextual study of one of the most familiar cases in both British and Commonwealth constitutional history: McCawley's case.

In this two-volume work, Ian Loveland offers a detailed exploration and analysis of 2 Australian entrenchment cases which have long been a source of fascination and inspiration to lawyers. This first volume, focusing on the McCawley case, introduces non-Australian readers to the remarkably rich legal and political history of constitutional formation and development in New South Wales and Queensland in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It culminates with a deeply contextualised analysis of the emergence of the bizarre ‘Two Act entrenchment’ principle which emerged in Queensland’s constitutional law in 1908 and the subsequent and celebrated McCawley judgments of the Australian High Court and Privy Council. The judgments are placed in both their deep and immediate historical and political contexts; from the legal formation of New South Wales in the late 1700s, through the creation of New South Wales and Queensland as distinct colonies in the 1850s and the subsequent passage of the Colonial Laws Validity Act 1865, on to the fiercely contested reformism espoused by Labour governments in Queensland in the early part of the twentieth century.