Political Freedoms and Entitlements in the Australian Constitution – An Example of Referential Intentions Yielding Unexpected Legal Consequences

This article is about the interpretation of legal texts. Its immediate aim is to defend, against a certain sort of originalist objection, the well-known cases that hold that the Australian Constitution, by implication, guarantees certain political freedoms and entitlements. That is not to say that the article intends to vindicate the outcome of every one of those cases – rather, it intends to vindicate the general methodology and orientation of those cases as stated by the High Court in Lange v. Australian Broadcasting Corporation