Statute of Westminster 1931

The Statute of Westminster 1931 was the enactment of the United Kingdom Parliament (December 11, 1931) which established the legislative sovereignty of the self-governing Dominions of the British Empire. (There exist also the Statutes of Westminster of 1275, 1285 and 1290 (known as First, Second and Third), passed by the parliaments of King Edward I.)

The 1931 Statute of Westminster formalised the independence of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Irish Free State, South Africa and Newfoundland except in relation to revision of the acts of parliament upon which the constitutions of Canada, Australia and New Zealand were founded. The Statute was expressed not to apply to Australia, New Zealand or Newfoundland unless and until adopted by those Dominions' Parliaments. Adoption of the Statute was strongly opposed by conservatives in Australia, and it was not until 1942 that it was finally adopted to clarify Government war powers (the adoption was backdated to the start of World War II in September 1939). New Zealand adopted the Statute in 1947. Newfoundland never adopted the Statute - Britain resumed direct rule in the 1930s and retained it until Newfoundland became a Province of Canada in 1949.

The key passage of the Statute provides that:

No Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom passed after the commencement of this Act shall extend or be deemed to extend, to a Dominion as part of the law of that Dominion, unless it is expressly declared in that Act that that Dominion has requested, and consented to, the enactment thereof.

It was also enacted that:

No law and no provision of any law made after the commencement of this Act by the Parliament of a Dominion shall be void or inoperative on the ground that it is repugnant to the law of England, or to the provisions of any existing or future Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom, or to any order, rule, or regulation made under any such Act, and the powers of the Parliament of a Dominion shall include the power to repeal or amend any such Act, order, rule or regulation in so far as the same is part of the law of the Dominion.

Under the provisions of other sections of the statute, the British Parliament still had the power to pass legislation regarding the Canadian constitution and the Australian states. These powers were removed by the Canada Act 1982 and the Australia Act 1986.

The preamble

The preamble to the Statute of Westminster set out conventions which impact on attempts to change the rules of succession to the Crown. The second paragraph of the prologue to the Statute reads:

And whereas it is meet and proper to set out by way of preamble to this Act that, inasmuch as the Crown is the symbol of the free association of the members of the British Commonwealth of Nations, and as they are united by a common allegiance to the Crown, it would be in accord with the established constitutional position of all the members of the Commonwealth in relation to one another that any alteration in the law touching the Succession to the Throne or the Royal Style and Titles shall hereafter require the assent as well of the Parliaments of all the Dominions as of the Parliament of the United Kingdom:

This means that any change to the Act of Settlement's provisions barring Roman Catholics from the throne or giving males precedence over females would require the unanimous consent of the parliaments of the Commonwealth realms. Note however that preambles an Act of Parliament does not form part of the Act itself and has no force in law, so the preamble merely expresses a constitutional convention, albeit one fundamental to the basis of the Commonwealth. In any case there can be no effective restriction on the powers of those Parliaments which recognise the doctrine of Parliamentary supremacy, namely the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

The convention about altering the "Royal Style and Titles" was altered by the Commonwealth Prime Ministers in 1953, when they agreed to pass individual Royal Styles and Titles Acts to enact different royal styles in each Realm.

External link

Statute of Westminster, 1931 (text)