Public Finance and Parliamentary Constitutionalism

Explores financial aspects of constitutional government, focusing on central banking, sovereign borrowing, taxation and public expenditure.

Will Bateman (Author)

9781108478113, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 September 2020

224 pages, 14 b/w illus.
16 x 23 x 2 cm, 0.55 kg

'Filling a significant gap in our public law scholarship is this new book devoted to examining in meticulous detail the history of the idea and practice of parliamentary control of government finances, and to discerning from that history a common pattern in the contemporary relationship between public finance and parliamentary constitutionalism in the United Kingdom and Australia … Dr Bateman's Public Finance and Parliamentary Constitutionalism is at once a work of legal history and of constitutional theory … So far as I am aware, the intellectual exercise in which he engages is of a nature no other legal scholar has had the temerity to engage in since the second half of the 19th century - and the exercise is all the more impressive given the enormous changes wrought in the 20th century.' The Hon. Justice Stephen Gageler AC, Melbourne University Law Review

Public Finance and Parliamentary Constitutionalism analyses constitutionalism and public finance (tax, expenditure, audit, sovereign borrowing and monetary finance) in Anglophone parliamentary systems of government. The book surveys the history of public finance law in the UK, its export throughout the British Empire, and its entrenchment in Commonwealth constitutions. It explains how modern constitutionalism was shaped by the financial impact of warfare, welfare-state programs and the growth of central banking. It then provides a case study analysis of the impact of economic conditions on governments' financial behaviour, focusing on the UK's and Australia's responses to the financial crisis, and the judiciary's position vis-à-vis the state's financial powers. Throughout, it questions orthodox accounts of financial constitutionalism (particularly the views of A. V. Dicey) and the democratic legitimacy of public finance. Currently ignored aspects of government behaviour are analysed in-depth, particularly the constitutional role of central banks and sovereign debt markets.

1. Finance and constitutionalism
Part I. Historical Development of Parliamentary Public Finance: 2. History (I): parliament and executive
3. History (II): judiciary
4. History (III): exporting parliamentary public finance
5. History (IV): public finance in the modern state
Part II. Parliamentary Public Finance in Operation: 6. Fiscal authority
7. Debt and monetary authority
8. Judicial power
Part III. Evaluating Parliamentary Public Finance: 9. Descriptive failure of parliamentary control
10. Theory and practice of financial self-rule.

Subject Areas: Constitutional & administrative law [LND], Public international law [LBB], Legal history [LAZ], Common law [LAFC], Law [L], Public finance [KFFD], Finance [KFF], Monetary economics [KCBM]