Constitutional Documents
Gathered together here are just a few of the historic documents which, cumulatively, have helped form the society of which we are members. Our heritage goes back many hundreds of years even though our founding as a unified Commonwealth is far more recent. It may not be politically expedient to acknowledge the fact but we should know that our early British heritage gave us the foundations on which we have built the structures of society we now have in place. Britain (or England as it was in the early days) evolved gradually and quite differently from the European mainland and the rest of the world. Parliamentary discussion and interaction with the monarch was accepted far more readily than other nations and as result it was Britain which gave to the world the idea of common law, regular justice, parliamentary elections, the crown-in-parliament and the general concept of freedom and liberty under the law.
These documents, in some cases startling and provocative as they are, proved to be the stepping stones to the forming of our own Constitution.
- The Text of Magna Carta (1215)
- The Provisions of Oxford (1258)
- English Bill of Rights (1688)
- The Act of Settlement, 1700 (1701)
- The US Declaration of Independence (1776)
- Governor Phillip’s Instructions (1787)
- The Constitution of the United States of America (1787)
- French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizens (1793)
- Statute of Westminster (1931)
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
- Royal Powers Act (1953)
- Royal Style & Titles Act (1953)
- Royal Style & Titles Act (1973)
- Australia Act (1986)
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