While section 44 of the Constitution has been around … well, since the enactment of the Constitution, it seems that it was only this year that some of our parliamentarians looked to their lineage and, shock horror, discovered that they may not have done the necessary due diligence before signing their nomination forms for their election to the Senate and House of Representatives.

“ … Your attention is drawn in particular to section 44 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia … Candidates who have any doubts about their eligibility, by virtue of section 44 of the Constitution, are advised to obtain their own legal advice … ”

One by one we saw our politicians falling foul of the rule of section 44.

Malcolm Roberts, now former Australian Senator, had cause to question his citizenship and sought to satisfy himself of same via email query, the subject line of which read “My inquiry is this: Am I still a British citizen?” (Re Roberts [2017] HCA 39, [40].)

The whole sorry saga had us thinking about how JADE Professional might help our future parliamentarians (or those who have to renominate after they sort out their dual citizenship woes) with those pesky forms …

Step 1: Look at section 44 of the Constitution! What would this tell you? The rules by which you must abide when nominating for a position in federal Parliament, of course!

Step 2: click on the Jadeclip … that innocuous little green clip on the right-hand side of the page … and unlock the power of JADE Professional! Find the latest case which considers section 44 of the Constitution and jump straight to the citations of that section in those cases. Set an alert to be notified of any cases decided on this particular section between now and the election.

Step 3: use our Citator tool to see how words and phrases like “eligibility”, “dual citizen”, “foreign citizenship” and “disqualified” have been used in judicial reasoning in the context of section 44.

Step 4: read those cases, analyse the judicial consideration of section 44 and call your mum just to check where she was born and confirm that she renounced her foreign citizenship before you sign that declaration!

“Constitutional crisis” averted! Easy (with the power of JADE)!

PS – we almost “broke the internet” on 27 October when the High Court handed down in its decision in Re Canavan [2017] HCA 45. The first legal publisher in Australia to publish the decision online, users are able to quickly see and navigate their way through the litigation history, cases and legislation cited by this decision and subsequent cases which cite it with just a few easy clicks.

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