Attorney-General (Vic) v Commonwealth

Part VI which contains ss. 89 to 93 is headed "Legitimation". Section 94 is the first section of Pt VII which is headed "Offences": s. 94 deals with "bigamy". The question of the power of the Commonwealth Parliament to enact s. 94 does not appear to me to be very serious but the question of the validity of what is enacted in Pt VI, particularly in ss. 89 and 91, is indeed serious. No source of legislative power extending to legitimation generally can be invoked unless it be the power conferred upon the Parliament by s. 51 (xxi.) to make laws with respect to marriage. The subject matter of the power is simply expressed by the one word "marriage." But the fewer the words in which the subject matter of a constitutional power is expressed the more extensive sometimes may be the field laid open to a generous interpretation. Nevertheless it may seem a paradox that bastardy, being a legal condition resulting from birth out of wedlock, should be removed by an exercise of a power to make laws with respect to marriage. But what s. 89 and s. 91 do is to seize upon the fact that at some time a marriage takes place between the parents - in the first case a valid marriage some time after the birth of the illegitimate child, in the second case an invalid marriage, considered by one party to be valid, as a result of which the child was born. The Commonwealth claims that it is with respect to that marriage, the valid subsequent marriage or the invalid prior marriage, that the impugned law was made and that it is within power because the law is but fixing consequences to a marriage, in the one case a valid subsequent marriage, in the other case an ostensible marriage, void but with a sufficient appearance of validity to persuade one party to believe in it. The argument for the Commonwealth, formulated with telling brevity, is that Pt VI is a law with respect to marriage because it determines the legal effects, in relation to the progeny of a man and a woman, of a marriage or a putative marriage between them. For the Attorney-General of the State the paradox remains; he maintains that the argument does not show that the law is one "with respect to" marriage; it is a law with respect to nothing but legitimation, the marriage actual or ostensible between the parties being at best a limiting condition. The case for the State Attorney-General is simply that the provisions fail for defect of power: they deal only with a status arising under State law for the purpose of the devolution of property and other rights depending on family or personal relationships.

The sections of Pt VI must be dealt with separately and in detail, in order to determine their relation to the subject of marriage. Section 89 is directed to legitimating children whose parents were not married to one another when they were born but intermarried subsequently: they are legitimated whether or not when they were born their parents might lawfully have married each other. The section bears a strong resemblance to s. 1 of the Legitimacy Act, 1926 of the United Kingdom (16 and 17 Geo. 5 c. 60) as amended by s. 1 of the Legitimacy Act, 1959 (7 & 8 Eliz. 2 c. 73). Sub-section (1) of s. 89 provides that a child whose parents were not married to each other at the time of his birth but have subsequently married each other is by virtue of the marriage for all purposes the legitimate child of his parents. The sub-section expressly says that the child may be born and the marriage may have taken place before or after the commencement of the Act and also that the child is legitimate from his birth or the commencement of the Act whichever is the later; but sub-s. (5) qualifies the effect of this general statement by providing that the section does not apply in relation to a child so as to affect any estate, right or interest in real or personal property to which a person has become, or may become, entitled by virtue of a disposition that took effect before the marriage of the parents of the child or the commencement of the Act whichever was the later, or entitled by devolution of law on the death of a person who died before the marriage of the parents of the child or the commencement of the Act whichever was the later. The qualification is expressed to apply whether the person became so entitled mediately or immediately in possession or in expectancy. The words "by virtue of the marriage" are to be noticed because they may be said to give the provision a more apparent connexion with marriage as a subject of legislative power. In the counterpart in the United Kingdom statute the words are "the marriage shall legitimate the child". On the other side the savings of sub-s. (5) bring out, what indeed is obvious enough, that the chief operation or effect of legitimation is to place the child in the same category as legitimate children for the purpose of inheritance, of sharing as next of kin, of filling descriptions found in wills, settlements and other assurances of property when the description depends on, or implies, blood relationship at some point and generally in affecting the operation or application of legal instruments or legal categories governing rights, duties, liabilities, privileges or immunities. Sub-section (4) saves, at all events in great measure, the effect of legitimations which under State law took place before the commencement of the Act and sub-s. (3) excludes from the application of s. 89 marriages when the domicile of the father was not Australian or the marriage did not take place in Australia (unless it took place under Pt V of the Act or what may be described as the corresponding previous legislation; (see s. 4)). Section 90 deals with the operation of marriages between parents abroad to legitimate a child born before the marriage but there is no reason to think that support for its validity may be obtained from any other legislative power and so far as it would operate to change the law its validity would seem to stand or fall with that of s. 89. Section 91 takes as its postulates first that there is a void marriage, and second that there is a child of that void marriage. If at the time that child was conceived or at the time when the marriage took place, whichever was the later, either party to the marriage believed on reasonable grounds that the marriage was valid, then the child of the void marriage is to be deemed for all purposes the legitimate child of his parents. One of the parents must have been domiciled in Australia when the child was born, or, if the parent died before the birth, at his death: (sub-s. (2)). But the section applies whether the child was born before or after the commencement of the Act whether marriage took place in or outside Australia or before or after the commencement of the Act. Sub-section (4) of s. 91 is to the same effect as sub-s. (5) of s. 89: it excludes the application of s. 92 in relation to a child so as to affect any estate, right or interest in any real or personal property (and so on, as in s. 89 (5)) to which a person has become or may become entitled (as in s. 89 (5)) before the birth of the child or the commencement of the Act whichever was the later. The provision is based on s. 2 of the Legitimacy Act, 1959 of the United Kingdom (7 & 8 Eliz. 2 c. 73): that section makes it very clear that the devolution of titles of honour, of interests in real and personal property and other rights are within the operation of the provision. It will be seen that in s. 91 the connexion with marriage is nothing more than that the child was born of parents between whom a void marriage had been celebrated. The marriage must have been entered into de facto before his birth but not necessarily before he was conceived. At one point or the other one party to the void marriage must have believed in the validity of the void marriage. Is that a law "with respect" to marriage?

A marriage taking place after the commencement of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1959 is void if one of the parties at the time it was celebrated was lawfully married to some other person, if the parties were within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity or affinity, if the consent of either party was unreal by reason of duress, fraud, mistaken identity, mistake as to the nature of the ceremony or mental incapacity of a party or if the marriageable age had not been reached by one of the parties to the marriage: see s. 18 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1959. It is not necessary to discuss the grounds under the laws of the States for treating marriages celebrated before the commencement of that Act as invalid; it suffices to say that a marriage within the prohibited degrees may be voidable and not void (Svanosio v. Svanosio [1] and Liddell v. Moss [2] ) and the marriageable ages were different. But a void marriage is no marriage at all.

1. [1918] V.L.R. 267. 2. [1920] S.R. (Q.) 104.

We are here dealing with bastardy or illegitimacy as a legal conception. When s. 89 (1) says that the (otherwise bastard) child is legitimate for all purposes and s. 91 says that in the conditions it stipulates the child shall be deemed for all purposes to be the legitimate child of his parents, they are surely speaking of the purposes of the law. If they are speaking only of social purposes, of the respect paid to the child born out of wedlock by his neighbours, the law contained in s. 89 and s. 91 would appear to have no sanctions and to provide little basis for any legal discussion of its falling within or outside the head of power. The validity of a law as an exercise of a legislative power must depend upon its legal operation. The test of the validity of a law as one made with respect to a given subject matter must in the end be what it does with reference to the subject matter. Doubtless simple statements like the foregoing may conceal many complications: for on the one hand the subject matter may itself involve or include a penumbra of things that are incidental, consequential and ancillary and a law as to some aspects of these things would not be ultra vires, and on the other hand the operation of a law upon any subject may not be apparent on its face but yet be clear when the actual practical working of cause and effect is perceived. Perhaps in this Court Sloan v. Pollard [1] , and Griffin v. Constantine [2] supply examples: they are examples which have the advantage of illustrating the difficulty while at the same time possessing no other bearing upon this case. It may be said at once that the power conferred by s. 51 (xxi.) should receive no narrow or restrictive construction. In Quick and Garran at p. 608 a wide connotation of the words "with respect to marriage" is suggested by a reference to a denotation which perhaps needs a little explanation. For it covers "consequences of the relation including the status of the married parties, their mutual rights and obligations, the legitimacy of children and their civil rights". These are indefinite and highly abstract words but the status of the married parties evidently refers to the particular legal position they hold by reason of their married state considered as a legal position which unmarried persons do not share; their mutual rights and obligations means those arising out of the married state and the legitimacy of children refers to the status of children born to them in wedlock. In all this "marriage" is considered as the source of the mutual rights and of the legal consequences which flow from it but requiring the definition, the support and the enforcement of the federal law. Sir Harrison Moore doubted whether the power was intended to go so far: - "But" (he wrote) "it enables the Commonwealth to determine what marriages shall be recognized in the Commonwealth, the forms for the celebration of marriage, the consents of parents, guardians etc., the capacity of the parties and the establishment or removal of disabilities to intermarriage. Whether it goes further and enables the Commonwealth Parliament to legislate as to the effect of marriage on the property of the spouses, their contractual and tortious responsibility, and their rights of succession inter se may be doubted". Moore, The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, 2nd ed. (1910) p. 474. But the decision of the questions before us does not appear to me to depend on the resolution of these doubts. The question, for example, whether s. 89 is valid does not lie so much in the extent of the legislative power with respect to marriage as in an appreciation of what s. 89 does, or in other words of its operation. When it says "the child is for all purposes the legitimate child of his parents" it is stating a proposition about his place in the law and the manner in which the law operates upon him and applies to and with reference to him. It is not a statement of a concept independently of its consequences; it is directed to placing him in a legal category, and to conferring upon him a status in the law for the purpose of affecting his rights and duties; the rights and duties being almost entirely, if not entirely, those depending on State statutes, upon the principles of the common law and the doctrines of equity, upon law which it is outside the powers of the Parliament directly to change. It is difficult to apprehend a distinction between a valid federal law "legitimating" an illegitimate child and a law placing him in the same category and under the same rights and duties as the law, the State law, has created for children of their parents born in wedlock. An illustration may be obtained from the Third Schedule of the Victorian Administration and Probate Act 1958. Clauses 3 and 4 of the schedule allow certain rebates from the duty imposed by s. 116 upon the estates of deceased persons. Among others "children" of the deceased to whom part of the final balance of the estate passes are or may be entitled to rebates. Clause 9 defines "children" for the purpose of the schedule and it provides that where the deceased person was a woman the illegitimate children of such person shall be included. Now it seems quite obvious that (if valid) s. 89 would operate to remove the illegitimate children who fall within s. 89 into the category of legitimate children although the deceased person be a man. This is, clearly enough, contrary to the intention of the State, but of course State law must give way under s. 109. Under s. 52 of the same Act distribution of an estate on intestacy is provided for and the persons entitled in the various contingencies that may occur are set out. Repeatedly children are referred to. That means, needless to say, legitimate children, and of course s. 89 (subject to the operation of sub-s. (5) of that section) will apply so as to bring within the class persons who under the law of the State are not legitimate and (even under Pt III of Act No. 6564) would not have been legitimated under that law. It is convenient to illustrate the position by reference to the provisions of the Victorian Administration and Probate Act 1958, but there are almost countless examples to be found under the law of the various States of the change in the operation or application of the law of the State which would be worked and what, perhaps, it is not too venturesome to say is that there is very little or no other real or actual legal operation that can be found for s. 89 and s. 91. It would be tedious to refer to all the points at which the operation or application of the law which lies outside the province of the Commonwealth would be affected. Heirship matters little nowadays even in relation to titles of honour, whether the heirs be special or general, but perhaps the obvious point should not be omitted that where a question of heirship exists either at common law or under or according to some assurance or instrument requiring that an heir should be taken into account it might be found that it was the federal enactment that would determine it and that would apply right down the line and across to collateral lines.

1. (1947) 75 C.L.R. 445. 2. (1954) 91 C.L.R. 136.

We are all familiar with the rule that in any disposition of property whether testamentary or inter vivos a reference to son, daughter, nephew, niece, sister or any ordinary descriptive term implying blood relationship is to be construed as confined to those filling the description by legitimate blood relationship: only a very strong context or a context aided by extrinsic circumstances leaving no logical escape will authorize any other interpretation. The rule when it became settled was not considered artificial but to accord with the intention expressed in the words. But however that may have been, it is clear that s. 89 and s. 91 would, if valid, give the rule a different application or operation; it would no longer apply to illegitimate sons or daughters legitimated under those sections whether they thus qualified as objects of the disposition or were persons through whom the actual objects traced their relationship. Take again the rebuttal of the presumption of a resulting trust by the relationship of the donee: the theory of advancement did not apply to an illegitimate child to whom the donor did not stand in loco parentis. Here again the operation of s. 89 and of s. 91 would be to change the application in fact of this rule. In questions of the custody, guardianship and maintenance of infants, in the interpretation of statutes on many subjects and in every matter where the relationship forms for purposes of State law a criterion of right, duty, privilege, immunity or other legal relationship, s. 89 must change or affect the operation of State law. The point is that that is how the law operates and not with respect to marriage.

If we turn now to s. 91, what has already been said of s. 89 will be seen to be equally applicable except for one characteristic. The characteristic excepted is that the de facto marriage which it postulates and which, if it were valid, would render the offspring legitimate may be said to be avoided or invalidated by Commonwealth law. May the legitimation of the offspring of the parents if one of them believes in the validity of the marriage be treated as nothing but a compensatory qualification of the invalidity? If so, would that suffice to make it a law with respect to "marriage"? Plainly its purpose is to give the status of a child born in wedlock to a child born out of wedlock, not to alleviate the condition of the parent who married "innocently", so to speak. The marriage need not take place before the conception of the child: it need not be since the Matrimonial Causes Act 1959. The better view appears to be that the section is a provision for conferring a status of legitimacy and that the requirement that there shall be a void marriage, although it provides a link with "marriage" in the sense of a pretended or invalid marriage, does not make it a law with respect to marriage. It is in fact an adoption with modifications and in some respects extensions of s. 1 of the Legitimacy Act, 1959 U.K. and possesses a like purpose which is not that of regulating marriage or otherwise of legislating with respect thereto but of affecting rights, duties and relations generally depending on legitimacy. In the argument for the Commonwealth the foregoing view that the substantial or chief legal operation of the provisions was to create the legal relations arising from legitimacy was by no means disregarded. The natural and historical relation of legitimacy to marriage was relied upon as warranting a use of the legislative power with respect to marriage to extend the boundaries of legitimacy. It is an argument that in part depends upon a more abstract or notional conception of legitimacy than has been conceded to it in the foregoing reasons. It is a conception which seems to pay insufficient regard to the fact that it is a legal conception adopted for the purposes operating by and upon the law. As an abstract social conception we cannot be concerned with it. Consistently, however, with the argument for the Commonwealth, a concession was made or suggested on behalf of the Commonwealth which it is difficult to accept. The concession was that although in face of s. 89 and s. 91 State law could not proceed on a basis that a child covered by those provisions was not a legitimate child of his parents - for to do so would be to bring invalidity under s. 109 of the Constitution - yet the State could enact laws which would distinguish between the legitimate and (if one may use the expression) those federally legitimated, and mould their inheritance laws and other such laws to prefer the former and perhaps thus consequentially or impliedly exclude the latter. It is not clear how far the suggested concession went: for it was not developed. But it is necessary to say that, unless by a very restrictive and unnatural interpretation of s. 89 and s. 91, it seems impossible without doing violence to the application commonly ascribed to s. 109 to understand how such a result could be justified.

As to s. 92 it seems unnecessary to add anything although it stands in Pt VI. It may be remarked, however, that under s. 77 of the Constitution it is not entirely free from difficulty. For example, it is by no means clear that the legitimacy referred to under sub-s. (1) (a) of s. 92 necessarily involves a matter arising under a law of the Commonwealth. It is enough to say that I think that the real usefulness of the section is in relation to s. 89 and s. 91 and if those sections are invalid it has no significance if it has anything to support it.

Section 94 dealing with the offence of bigamy raises an entirely different question. The objections made to its validity are that it is not directed to a marriage as such but rather to public order and good morals. The suggestion is that the second marriage is no marriage and to make it an offence to go through the ceremony of marriage, being married, is not a law with respect to marriage. This view does not appear tenable. The crime consists in the profanation or misuse of the marriage ceremony. It is surely within the competence of the Commonwealth to make it an offence to enter into a marriage fraudulently or to go through a marriage ceremony with no capacity to do so. How the crime is dealt with is entirely a matter of policy. Section 94 appears clearly enough to be law with respect to marriage or to matters incidental thereto, and it is a valid law of the Commonwealth. But as to Pt VI it is enough to say that the operation of ss. 89 and 91 is not in relation to marriage but in relation to legitimacy as a matter affecting proprietary and other rights, obligations, capacities and responsibilities. They are not laws with respect to marriage.

The validity of Pt VI and of s. 94 of the Marriage Act 1961 - a Federal statute - is called into question in this action. The heading of Pt VI is "Legitimation", and it consists of ss. 89 to 93 inclusive. The side-notes to these sections are: "Legitimation by virtue of marriage of parents", s. 89; "Foreign legitimations", s. 90; "Legitimacy of children of certain void marriages", s. 91; "Declarations of legitimacy etc." (and of legitimation), s. 92; "Adoptions, and State etc." (and Territory) "law as to registration not to be affected", s. 93. Section 94 is in Pt VII of the Act; the heading of this part is "Offences", and the sidenote to s. 94 is "Bigamy". The ground on which the action is based is that s. 51 of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act does not authorize the Parliament to pass any of the provisions of the Marriage Act 1961 which have been mentioned. The defence of the validity of the provisions is based on par. (xxi.) of s. 51. The subject of this power is designated, "Marriage". Sections 89 and 90 seek to confer on children born before their parents married - children whose status is bastardy - the status of legitimacy. These sections would if valid alter the status of such children from bastardy to legitimacy. They do not seek merely to draw the veil over the bastardy of such children but to invest them with the status of legitimacy in the concrete. Legitimacy has under English law a number of aspects: it is a status consisting of rights of inheritance from parents and next of kin; it is a branch of family law comprising the rights and obligations arising from the relation of parent and child; it comprises rules of interpretation, which favour legitimate children. Section 89 enacts as to a "child" of the class of whom it speaks, a child born before the intermarriage of his parents, that he "is, by virtue of the marriage" (of his parents) "for all purposes the legitimate child of his parents ". It is apparent from the terms of the section that at the time of the marriage the person concerned might be sui juris, or he might not then be living: the section is expressed to apply if at the time of that person's birth there was a legal impediment to the marriage of his parents to each other. In view of the latter provision, it would appear to me to be difficult to support the validity of the section as an exercise of the marriage power on the theory that by its own inherent quality the marriage of the parents relates back so as to rectify the status of the child. That the section aims at vesting the "child" of whom it speaks with new juristic rights, such as are connoted by the status of legitimacy, is clear from sub-s. (5), whose purpose is to limit the vesting of such rights in the way mentioned in that sub-section. The frame work of s. 90 is different from s. 89. Its essential purpose is the same as that of s. 89. The gist of both sections is expressed in the words I have quoted from s. 89; these words artificially attribute to the marriage it mentions the virtue of rendering the child with which it is concerned "for all purposes" the legitimate child of his parents. Each of these sections mentions marriage only for the purpose of making it a mode of legitimation. The real object is to remove from the child with which the section is concerned all the disabilities under which a bastard labours and to put him before the law as a legitimate child: the result at which these sections aim is to give the child new juristic rights, those appertaining to the status of legitimacy. It does not follow from the fact that "marriage" is mentioned in these sections that they are laws "with respect to" - on the subject of - marriage. The test of the nature of the laws is the object to which they are primarily directed. In my opinion ss. 89 and 90 are really laws of legitimacy. If legitimacy is not a facet of marriage these sections cannot be supported under s. 51 of the Constitution.

The term "Marriage" only outlines the power granted by par. (xxi.) of s. 51: it does not particularize its contents, but nothing diverse in kind from what is connoted by the term marriage falls within the scope of the power. The words "with respect to" are words of "indication" not of "enlargement". The term marriage bears its own limitations and Parliament cannot enlarge its meaning. In the context - the Constitution - the term "marriage" should receive its full grammatical and ordinary sense: plainly in this context it means only monogamous marriage. In my view, the term in par. (xxi.) refers to marriage as a social transaction: but as the term marks the outer limits of the power conferred by par. (xxi.) its meaning is not imprecise. In my view, the term cannot be extended further than to embrace uniting in marriage and the status of marriage. The meaning of status used in relation to marriage is discussed in Ford v. Ford [1] . A function of marriage is to confer legitimacy on children born in lawful wedlock. In the case of the children to whom ss. 89 and 90 refer they would be legitimated by the operation of these sections, not by marriage, if the sections are valid. In writing about the relation of marriage to legitimacy, Mr. Jackson said in his treatise on the Formation and Annulment of Marriage, p. 34: " The Statute of Merton brought to a head differences in ecclesiastical and lay attitudes to the law of illegitimacy. The legitimacy of a child has obvious connexions with marriage". Marriage is one branch of family law: legitimacy is another branch of that law. The Constitution is guarded in granting power to the Parliament to legislate on the subject of domestic relations. Section 51 (xxi.) grants power to legislate on "Marriage": s. 51 (xxii.) mentions, as subjects of legislative power, "Divorce and matrimonial causes, and in relation thereto parental rights and the custody of children". Does the term "Marriage" tacitly extend to bastardy or legitimacy? Fr. G. H. Joyce S.J. writes in his study of The History and Doctrine of Christian Marriage 2nd ed., p. 264: "Legitimacy and dower are more or less intimately connected with marriage". The husband of a married woman is presumed to be the father of her child but by proper and cogent evidence the child may be proved to be a bastard. Legitimacy is correlative to marriage and the parenthood of both husband and wife, not merely to marriage. Legitimacy and marriage are connected in that a child born of the marriage is legitimate: but they are not parts of a whole subject which the term marriage is apt to describe. A competent legislature may make legitimation conditional on the fact of subsequent marriage, registration or any process it thinks fit to prescribe: it may legitimate any person, who is illegitimate, by direct enactment. Marriage under English law does not itself legitimate children born before marriage. The term "marriage" in s. 51 bears its own limitations and one is that in its lay aspect, the legitimation of antenati, children born before marriage, is beyond its province. The Parliament of the Commonwealth cannot under its marriage power pass a law giving marriage - that is the subsequent marriage of the parents of children born before marriage - that effect. In my view ss. 89 and 90 are unconstitutional intrusions into fields of law which under s. 51 of the Constitution stay with the States and are part of their exclusive province of legislation. In my opinion both these sections are beyond the competence of the Parliament of the Commonwealth.

Section 91, an important provision in Pt VI, is an entirely different kind of law from ss. 89 and 90. Its operation is by way of rectifying the status of a child whom the law cannot regard as legitimate merely because it places the marriage of the child's parents in the category of a void marriage. The child with whom the section is concerned is not one born out of wedlock in the sense that he was born before the marriage of his parents: he is, in fact, a child born of a marriage between his parents. The object of the section is to declare that the child derived the status of legitimacy from the marriage of which he was born if either parent was in bona fide as prescribed. The section does not seek, as do ss. 89 and 90 to ascribe to marriage, the extraneous quality of a legitimating process. I think that s. 91 is in substance a law on the subject of "Marriage" and is therefore valid.

In my view s. 92 might be justified as a good exercise of power to make laws under s. 51 (xxi.) if legitimacy were part of the subject matter "Marriage". It follows from the view I have taken as to the interpretation of this power, that s. 92 cannot stand except as ancillary to s. 91. But I express no opinion as to whether it would be correct to "read down" s. 92 so as to limit its operation in that way. Subject to this I would declare s. 92 invalid.

Section 93 raises no separate constitutional question. It is ancillary to each of the preceding sections in Pt VI. As I think that s. 91 is valid, I would declare s. 93 valid in so far as it limits the operation of s. 91.

The last of the sections which are in question is s. 94. It describes conduct equivalent to the felony of bigamy and imposes punishment for such conduct. The argument against the validity of this section was based upon the history of the felony of bigamy. It does not seem to me necessary to recapitulate that history. The conclusion sought to be drawn from it is that bigamy belongs to the sphere of crime, not of marriage law, and the section is bad because crime in general is not a head of power mentioned in s. 51 of the Constitution. Section 94 does describe conduct substantially equivalent to the felony of bigamy. But I think that the conduct can be regarded under another aspect. In my opinion, a constitutional justification for the enactment of s. 94 is that it is a law for the protection of the monagamous character of marriage and the use of the ceremony or form of marriage for unlawful purposes; and to legislate for those purposes is not a departure from the subject matter of par. (xxi.) of s. 51.

It seems to me to be sufficient to make an order that ss. 89 and 90 are invalid.

The Commonwealth demurs to a statement of claim by which the Attorney-General for the State of Victoria seeks declarations of invalidity, for excess of legislative power, in respect of the provisions contained in six sections of the Marriage Act 1961 enacted by the Parliament of the Commonwealth. The sections are ss. 89 to 94 inclusive, and their main provisions may be broadly described as having to do with three topics: legitimation per subsequens matrimonium, the legitimacy of the child of a void marriage, and the crime of bigamy. The Constitution contains no specific grant of power to make laws with respect to legitimation or legitimacy, or with respect either to bigamy in particular or crime in general; and there is no head of federal power which is or could be relied upon to support any of the challenged provisions (leaving aside s. 92 for the moment), unless it be the power with respect to marriage (s. 51 (xxi.)), or the incidental power (s. 51 (xxxix.)) in its application to the execution of the marriage power.

Sections 89 and 90 provide for the legitimation of illegitimate children by the marriage of their parents. The former section applies where either the father was domiciled in Australia at the time of the marriage or the marriage took place in Australia or, under certain federal enactments, outside Australia. The latter section applies where the marriage took place outside Australia and the father, though not domiciled in Australia at the time of the marriage, was then domiciled in a place by the law of which the child became legitimated by virtue of the marriage. Each section, where it applies, makes the child "the legitimate child of his parents" as from the later of two events - in the case of s. 89 the child's birth or the commencement of the Act, and in the case of s. 90 the marriage of the parents or the commencement of the Act. Legitimation under s. 89 is limited by sub-s. (5) so as not to affect any estate right or interest in property to which a person is entitled by virtue of a disposition which took effect, or by devolution by law on the death of a person who died, before the marriage of the parents or the commencement of the Act, whichever was the later; but, with this qualification, legitimation under either section is "for all purposes".

Whether these sections are laws with respect to marriage is a question to be decided upon consideration of their purported legal operation, that is to say of the changes that they purport to make in the existing law. Each provision, in a case to which it applies, alters the legal situation both of the child and of the parents, and consequently the legal situation of every person who may trace relationship to the child through the parents or vice versa. Whereas formerly the fact that the child was born of the parents was denied recognition for legal purposes generally (though it was recognized for some particular purposes), it is now to be recognized for all legal purposes, subject, in cases under s. 89, to the qualification in s. 89 (5). The common law, "shutting its eyes to the facts of life", as Viscount Simonds put it in Galloway v. Galloway [1] , "described an illegitimate child as filius nullius ". By the Act, if the sections be valid, the law admits him to the title of a lawful child and admits his natural parents to the title of his lawful parents. The ultimate legal consequences are to be found in the application of a variety of statutory provisions, wills, settlements and other instruments. Classes described by reference to relationship, as by such expressions as "child", "parent", "nephew", may become enlarged by the inclusion of the child in virtue of his legitimation: for instruments using such expressions take effect on the footing that unless a different intention appears they are to be understood "according to the meaning of the terms used by the law": Boyes v. Bedale [1] . That is to say that instruments employing such expressions, if they employ them without qualification, possess an inherent flexibility of application since they describe classes the width of which at any given time depends upon the extent of the recognition which the law accords at that time to actual relationships. Accordingly, a legitimation provision is not a law affecting legal interpretation: it does not make instruments operate otherwise than in accordance with the intention they disclose, but only alters the situation in which that intention takes effect. As Romer J. observed in regard to wills in In re Bischoffsheim; Cassel v. Grant [2] , citing Kay J. in In re Andros; Andros v. Andros [3] : "The only relevant rule of construction is that a bequest in an English will to the children of A. means to his legitimate children and that rule does not carry the matter very far, for the question remains who are his legitimate children and that is not a question of construction at all, it is a question of law" [4] . This necessarily means that the divers matters which form the subjects of instruments referring to children, or parents, or relatives to be traced through the one to the other, continue to be governed by the relevant instruments, and the instruments continue to mean what they meant before. I ought, I think, to add that for my own part I should have thought the learned Solicitor-General for the Commonwealth was right when he said that if a State legislature should consider that the extension by ss. 89 and 90 (and s. 91 also) of the class of persons to be recognized as lawful children results in any of its laws taking effect in a manner of which it disapproves the remedy is in its own hands. A State law which refers to "children", for example, might be amended so as to limit the class to children born or conceived during the marriage. That would suffice to create, between such children on the one hand and legitimate children generally on the other, just such a distinction as the common law has made familiar by distinguishing for the purposes of succession to realty between children born in lawful wedlock on the one hand and all legitimate children (including those whose legitimation per subsequens matrimonium under the law of another country is recognized in England) on the other.

1. [1956] A.C., at p. 311. 2. (1863) 1 H. & M. 798, at p. 803 [71 E.R. 349, at p. 351]. 3. [1948] Ch. 79. 4. (1883) 24 Ch. D. 637, at p. 639. 5. [1948] Ch., at pp. 86, 87.

Of course, not every enactment which confers the status of legitimacy upon illegitimate children is properly described as a law with respect to marriage. If the legitimation is made to depend not upon the contracting of a valid marriage but upon the taking of some other step by the parents or one of them or by someone else - upon a formal acknowledgment of the child by the parents, for example, or the order of a Court or of an executive official - there is not such a relation between the law and the subject of marriage as would justify the description. But in such a case, it seems to me, the enactment is rightly to be described not only as a law with respect to legitimation but also as a law with respect to the step to which a legitimating effect is given. The purpose and operation of the law is to annex a legal incident to the step, and there seems to be no error of proportion or perspective in regarding the step itself, no less than legitimation, as a topic of the law. But, however this may seem in regard to legitimating steps of other kinds, at least it should be conceded, I think, where a marriage between a child's parents is made to spell the legitimation of the child. For it is of the essence of marriage, from a legal point of view, that it produces, or provides a pre-requisite for, the legal recognition of family relationships; and what a law does which provides for legitimation by marriage is simply to add to the legal significance of marriage in this very matter of legal relationships. It is not as if, under such a law, the change of status as between child and parents depended upon the intention or agreement of the parents when marrying one another. If it did, marriage, though referred to in the enactment, could hardly be described as a subject in respect of which the law was made. But a law which makes the legitimation of a child - perhaps one might more appropriately say the legitimation of the parents as such - an inevitable legal consequence of the inter-marrying of the parents seems to me to be a law directly and squarely upon the subject of what marriage amounts to in law, and therefore upon the subject of marriage. Whether a law operating by reference to the married status, a Married Women's Property Act for example, is also a law upon marriage is a question of a different kind, and I say nothing about it. Here we are concerned only with a law dealing with the legal nature of marrying, a law joining with other laws to fix the bounds of the legal changes which marrying is to bring about.

When Pothier wrote his Traité du Contrat de Mariage, he included in his chapter on the civil effects of marriage an article containing a full discussion of legitimation per subsequens matrimonium, evidently considering that to do so was by no means to travel beyond the bounds of his subject. Perhaps to one steeped in systems of law derived from the Roman it comes more naturally to treat legitimation by marriage as a subdivision of the topic of marriage than it does to one whose habits of thought have been formed in the common law, and in whose mind, therefore, the topic of marriage is altogether separate from that of legitimation save in relation to the exceptional case where the principles of private international law require notice to be taken of foreign rules. Nevertheless I doubt whether anyone who reads the celebrated judgments in the cases of Birtwhistle v. Vardill [1] , and In re Goodman's Trusts [2] , can fail to receive the impression that those who took part in those cases conceived themselves to be considering a branch of the law as to the effect of marriage. Indeed, the subject of legitimation by marriage is very generally treated and spoken of in the books as if the most natural approach to it is from the angle of its being marriage in its legitimating aspect. Pothier, for example, wrote of the Constitution of Constantine (to which he pointed as the origin of legitimation by subsequent marriage) as having provided that not only should the marriage give the woman the title and the rights of a lawful wife "but should give equally to the children whom he should have had of that woman while she was no more than a concubine the title and all the rights of lawful children": Pt V, c. 2, art 2, s. 1. The legitimation of ante-nati he described as coming about " par la seule force et efficace du mariage "; and he quoted the Latin: " Tanta est vis matrimonii, ut qui antea sunt geneti, post contractum matrimonium legitimi habeantur ". To my mind, a law by the operation of which so much vis, so much force et efficace, attaches to marriage should not be denied the description of a law with respect to marriage.

1. (1835) 2 Cl. & F. 571 [6 E.R. 1270]; (1840) 7 Cl. & F. 895 [7 E.R. 1308]. 2. (1881) 17 Ch. D. 266.

I conclude, therefore, that ss. 89 and 90 are laws of the Commonwealth validly made under s. 51 (xxi.) of the Constitution, and I turn to ss. 91 and 94. Those sections, though different from one another in nature, are, I think, alike in this that they both should be considered in association with s. 18 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1959 Cth. That section declares that a marriage is void in each of five cases. The cases may be thus described: (a) where either party is, at the time of the marriage, lawfully married to some other person; (b) where the parties are within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity or affinity and their marriage is not permitted under s. 20; (c) (subject to certain exceptions) where the marriage is not valid under the law of the place where it takes place, by reason of a failure to comply with the requirements of the law of that place with respect to the form of solemnization of marriages; (d) where the consent of either of the parties is not a real consent, because of duress, fraud, mistake as to the identity of the other party or the nature of the ceremony, or mental incapacity; and (e) where either of the parties is not of marriageable age. Such a provision having been made, and clearly made in execution of the power with respect to marriage which is vested in the Parliament by s. 51 (xxi.) of the Constitution, the question which seems to me to be crucial in regard to the validity of ss. 91 and 94 of the Marriage Act is whether those sections are not laws with respect to matters incidental to that execution, and so within the power under s. 51 (xxxix.) of the Constitution to legislate upon incidental matters. It is settled that the matters to which that power extends are not such as are incidental to the subject matter of other powers (for these are within the grant of those other powers themselves), but are such additional matters as arise in the course of exercising other powers: Attorney-General for the Commonwealth v. Colonial Sugar Refinery Co. Ltd. [1] ; Le Mesurier v. Connor [2] . What s. 91 does by its leading provision (and its remaining provisions merely qualify this in certain respects) is to require that a child of a void marriage shall be deemed for all purposes to be the legitimate child of his parents as from his birth or the commencement of the Act (whichever is the later) if, at the time the child was begotten or the marriage took place (whichever was the later), either party believed on reasonable grounds that the marriage was valid. Thus the Parliament, having rendered void five classes of marriages which otherwise would have been valid, has by s. 91 done no more than add an ancillary provision, limiting the legal consequences of the avoidance. In respect of marriages which are merely voidable, it had enacted a limitation of a comparable kind in s. 51 (2) of the Matrimonial Causes Act itself, providing that a decree of nullity of a voidable marriage does not render illegitimate a child of the parties born since, or legitimated during, the marriage. I should not doubt that that was a valid provision, as being a law upon a matter arising incidentally in the execution of the marriage power by the enactment of s. 51 (1), whereby a decree of nullity of a voidable marriage is made to annul the marriage from the date of the decree absolute. In my opinion, s. 91 is valid for a like reason.

1. [1914] A.C. 237, at p. 256. 2. (1929) 42 C.L.R. 481, at p. 498.

Then, s. 94 enacts in sub-s. (1) that a person who is married shall not go through a form or ceremony of marriage with any person; and it provides as the maximum penalty imprisonment for five years. In sub-s. (4) it enacts that a person shall not go through a form or ceremony of marriage with a person who is married, knowing, or having reasonable grounds to believe, that the latter person is married; and it provides a similar penalty. The remaining sub-sections are ancillary and need to be described. The provisions of sub-ss. (1) and (4), and consequently the provisions of the section as a whole, appear to me to be laws upon a matter incidental to the rendering void of polygamous marriages by s. 18 (1) (a) of the Matrimonial Causes Act, and the making of provision in ss. 45 and 46 of the Marriage Act as to the forms and ceremonies by which valid marriages may be solemnized. Such provisions as those of s. 94 (1) and (4) appear to be traditional in systems of law which insist upon the monogamous character of marriage. Originally the Church, regarding marriage as a sacrament and the married state as essentially monogamous, undertook the punishment of persons who profaned its ceremonies by misapplying them to bigamous purposes, deceitfully making solemn affirmation that no impediment stood in the way. In England the jurisdiction passed to the temporal courts, at latest by the statute 1 Jac. I, c. 11 (see Russell on Crime, 11th ed. (1958) p. 826); and parliaments have gone on ever since enacting laws for the punishment of bigamy. Why the practice should so long have persisted of making provisions on the subject in such drastic terms as those of s. 94, instead of confining severe penalties to the case where the party already married has used the marriage ceremony as a means for deception of the other, is a question that has puzzled Professor Glanville Williams (see (1945) 61 L.Q.R. pp. 76-78), notwithstanding his recognition that "it is this ceremony that, through the force of tradition, maintains the institution of monogamy and keeps families stable". But whatever one may think about that, the fact remains that the exercise of legislative power to make marriage monogamous by rendering void a bigamous marriage has for centuries been accompanied by legislation making it a crime to go through a ceremony of marriage bigamously. Accordingly, when a legislature exercises a power to make laws with respect to marriage by denying validity to bigamous marriages and by prescribing the forms and ceremonies by which valid marriages may be solemnized, it is faced by long tradition with an incidental question, whether it should not add a criminal sanction directed to keeping the forms and ceremonies of marriage from being used for bigamous unions. When it gives its answer in the form of an enactment such as s. 94, it legislates, in my opinion, upon a matter incidental to the execution of its power in respect of marriage.

Only ss. 92 and 93 remain to be mentioned. No more need be said of the latter, which saves the validity and effect of adoptions and the operation of State and Territory laws providing for entries in registers, than that it must necessarily stand or fall with ss. 89-91. On the other hand, s. 92, while it would necessarily fall with ss. 89-91 if they were to be held void, is not necessarily valid if they be upheld: for in the latter event there remains a question to which the Chief Justice has drawn attention. The section purports to invest the Supreme Court of a State or Territory with jurisdiction to hear and determine an application for a declaration (a) that the applicant is the legitimate child of his parents, or (b) that he or his parents or child or a remote ancestor or descendant is or was a legitimated person. In so far as the section purports to invest State courts with federal jurisdiction, it must depend for its validity upon s. 77 (iii.) of the Constitution. This is limited to conferring federal jurisdiction with respect to any of the matters mentioned in ss. 75 and 76; and of these the only description of matter that seems relevant is a matter "arising under any laws made by the Parliament": s. 76 (ii.). Whether the jurisdiction which s. 92 purports to confer is so limited, or should be so confined by an application of s. 15A of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901-1957 Cth, that the section is supportable under these provisions of the Constitution is a question which has not been argued, and it appears not to be within the intended scope of the demurrer. Subject to the exclusion of that question, the demurrer, in my opinion, should be allowed.

The Marriage Act 1961 is a comprehensive statute enacted pursuant to the power of the Parliament of the Commonwealth to make laws for the peace order and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to "Marriage". It contains a great many provisions and its main purpose is to establish a uniform marriage law throughout the Commonwealth. As may be expected it deals with the subject of marriageable age and the marriage of minors, the application of the prohibited degrees of consanguinity and affinity referred to in ss. 18-20 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1959 and the Second Schedule to that Act, it makes provision for authorizing prescribed persons to solemnize marriages and for the definition of their functions and duties, it creates certain offences and contains a number of transitional provisions. But it is with certain provisions of Pt VI of the Act that we are immediately concerned. Initially this Part deals with the legitimation of children by subsequent marriage. In particular s. 89 provides that a child whose parents were not married to each other at the time of his birth but have subsequently married each other is, by virtue of the marriage, for all purposes the legitimate child of his parents as from his birth or the commencement of the Act, whichever was the later. This provision applies in relation to a child whether or not there was a legal impediment to the marriage of his parents at the time of his birth and whether or not the child was still living at the time of the marriage. But it does not apply in relation to a child unless at the time of the marriage of his parents his father was domiciled in Australia or unless the marriage took place in Australia or outside Australia under Pt V of the Act or under the Marriage (Overseas) Act 1955. Further, the provision does not apply in relation to a child so as to affect any estate, right or interest in real or personal property to which a person has become, or may become, entitled, either mediately or immediately, in possession or expectancy, by virtue of a disposition that took effect, or by devolution by law on the death of a person who died, before the marriage of the parents of the child or the commencement of the Act, whichever was the later (sub-s. (5)). Section 90 deals with the case of what are called foreign legitimations and operates to legitimate children born out of wedlock where the marriage of its parents took place outside Australia and the father was not domiciled in Australia at the time of the marriage. Section 91 deals with a different type of case. Where there has been a child of a void marriage such child shall be deemed for all purposes to be the legitimate child of his parents if, at the time of the intercourse that resulted in the birth of the child or the time when the ceremony of marriage took place, whichever was the later, either party to the marriage believed on reasonable grounds that the marriage was valid. The operation of the section is subject to appropriate requirements as to domicile and sub-s. (4) contains a provision similar to that contained in s. 89 (5). Each of these provisions is impugned on the ground that it does not answer the description of a law with respect to "Marriage". Rather, it is said, they should be characterized as laws with respect to inheritance or, perhaps, laws with respect to family relations. On neither of these views, it is contended, can they be justified by reference to the constitutional power relied upon.

A further provision which is attacked is s. 94 of the Act which, in effect, provides that bigamy shall be an offence punishable by imprisonment. The force of the argument that this provision is invalid has eluded me for however narrow a view be taken of the constitutional power, it must be implicit that the Parliament of the Commonwealth may prescribe the requisites of a valid marriage, that it may attribute a legal effect to the marriage itself, and that it may provide that neither party shall, whilst the marriage subsists, go through a form of marriage with another person. Such a provision is, in my view, at the very heart of a power to make laws with respect to marriage.

To a considerable extent the plaintiff's argument depended upon the initial contention that the constitutional power is limited to an authority to make laws with respect to the solemnization of marriage. The ultimate basis for this contention is that in s. 51 of the Constitution, par. (xxi.) - "Marriage" - is immediately followed by par. (xxii.) - "Divorce and matrimonial causes; and in relation thereto, parental rights and the custody and guardianship of infants". This latter head of power, of course, authorizes laws with respect to the dissolution of marriages and this is a power, it is said, which would be conferred by par. (xxi.) if it stood alone. But it does not stand alone and it is contended that, in the presence of par. (xxii.), it ought to receive the limited construction suggested. I do not assent to this contention and would not be prepared to do so even if it seemed to me that, standing alone, par. (xxi.) would justify the enactment of every law expressly authorized by par. (xii.) for the fact that the constitutional instrument contains express provision for the matters mentioned in the latter paragraph provides no warrant for reading "Marriage", merely, as "Solemnization of Marriages". What must be borne in mind is that the expression with which we are concerned is used to define a broad constitutional power and in the paragraph in question the word "marriage" - appearing without limitation or qualification - is entitled to as wide an interpretation as it can reasonably bear. It is, of course, impossible to suggest a synonym which will precisely define the limits of the power and, no doubt, its full meaning will be worked out only in the fullness of time. But in the meantime I feel bound to regard the paragraph as justification for the enactment of any law with respect to marriage considered as an institution. That is to say, that it extends not only to laws prescribing the form and requisites of a valid marriage but also to laws defining and regulating the respective rights duties and obligations of the parties inter se. Indeed, the full measure of the legal effect of a marriage can be determined only by reference to the rights duties and obligations, which, by law, arise out of the relationship and I can see no reason why a constitutional power to make laws with respect to the subject matter of "Marriage" should not be thought to authorize laws defining or modifying and re-defining the legal incidents of the relationship. It is, of course, a relationship which is not by any means constituted or regulated exclusively by a congeries of legally enforceable rights and duties. In respect of many aspects of the relationship, as Atkin L.J. observed in Balfour v. Balfour [1] , "Each house is a domain into which the King's writ does not seek to run, and to which his officers do not seek to be admitted" [2] (see also Gage v. The King [3] ).

1. [1919] 2 K.B. 571. 2. [1919] 2 K.B., at p. 579. 3. [1961] 1 Q.B. 188.

I should add that in expressing the view which I have concerning the content of the constitutional power I feel fortified by the decision in In re Marriage Legislation in Canada [4] . In that case the questions which were before the Judicial Committee were concerned with the powers, inter se, of the Parliament of a Province and the Parliament of the Dominion with respect to the making of laws relating to the validity of marriages celebrated in a particular manner. By s. 91 of the British North America Act 1867 the Parliament of the Dominion had exclusive power to make laws, it should be observed, with respect to marriage and divorce. But by s. 92 the legislature of each Province might exclusively make laws in relation to the solemnization of marriage in the Province. The argument against the validity of the particular provincial statute that was impugned was that "all questions relating to the validity of the contract of marriage, including the conditions of that validity, were within the exclusive jurisdiction conferred on the Dominion Parliament by s. 91" [5] . As a corollary it was argued that the provincial power extended "only to the directory regulation of the formalities by which the contract is to be authenticated, and does not extend to any question of validity" [5] . This argument was rejected, the Judicial Committee being of the opinion that the terms of the grant of exclusive power to the provincial legislatures should be understood as importing "the whole of what solemnization ordinarily meant in the systems of law of the Provinces of Canada at the time of confederation including conditions which affect validity" [6] . As a consequence the grant of provincial power, as so construed, was to be understood as an exception from the grant of exclusive power made to the Dominion Parliament. Their Lordships did not purport to say what residue of exclusive power in relation to laws with respect to marriage remained in the Parliament of the Dominion after making the necessary exception from its general grant but there can be no doubt that much remained as is illustrated by the case of Hill v. Hill [1] . In that case it was held that a provincial statute which authorized a married woman to sue in any form of action as if she were an unmarried woman - and which, therefore, affected her status and purported to entitle her to sue her husband for slander - was an invasion of the exclusive power of the Parliament of the Dominion to make laws with respect to marriage. These observations are I think more than sufficient to dispose of the objection to s. 94 but they do not dispose of the objections to the other sections which are under attack.

1. [1912] A.C. 880. 2. [1912] A.C., at p. 886. 3. [1912] A.C., at p. 886. 4. [1912] A.C., at p. 887. 5. [1928] 4 D.L.R. 161.

It is said by Blackstone that by the common law of England a legitimate child was one "born in lawful wedlock, or within a competent time afterwards" (Commentaries vol. i p. 446). The parents of any such child were bound to maintain and protect it and, in some measure, to give it an education suitable to its station in life though as Blackstone acknowledges, with due moderation and propriety, it could not be denied that the laws of his time had defects in the lastmentioned particular (p. 451). All other children were said to be bastards and could "be made legitimate, and capable of inheriting, by the transcendent power of an act of parliament, and not otherwise; as was done in the case of John of Gaunt's bastard children, by a statute of Richard the Second" (Commentaries vol. i, p. 459). In the course of his discussion Blackstone refers to the distinction between civil and canon law, on the one hand, and the English common law, on the other, concerning the principle of legitimation by subsequent marriage and, in support of the common law, he sets out the reasons upon which "we may suppose the peers to have acted at the parliament of Merton when they refused to enact that children born before marriage should be esteemed legitimate". But there seems reason to doubt "that in the thirteenth century the question was discussed on what, in modern times, would be considered its real merits". These are the words of Sir Dennis FitzPatrick in an article in the Journal of Comparative Legislation (N.S. vol. vi p. 35) whilst Pollock and Maitland seem to think that on that occasion history may have been falsified "in order to secure a triumph for English law" (The History of English Law 2nd ed. (1898) vol. i, p. 209.) However this may be, it has been pointed out that in spite of the general terms of the resolution of the barons, it was made effective "only by a procedural rule, applicable at least to a Possessory Writ, that the special plea in an action for the recovery of land that a child was not born in wedlock was tried by a jury in the Common Law Courts" and that, "apart from this special case, the question of legitimacy would be left as an issue to be tried by the Ecclesiastical Courts" (Potter - Historical Introduction to English Law and its Institutions, 3rd ed. (1948) p. 212). Indeed, it is said, that "Even after the Reformation there is authority for saying that legitimum per subsequens matrimonium was recognized by the Ecclesiastical Courts". As Pollock and Maitland put it "Thenceforward (i.e. after the statute of Merton) the king's justices assumed the right to send to a jury the question whether a person was born before or after the marriage of his parents, and it might fall out that a man legitimate enough to be ordained or (it may be) to succeed to the chattels of his father, would be a bastard incapable of inheriting land either from father or from mother (vol. i p. 127)." At a later stage these learned authors again refer to the disagreement between the temporal and spiritual courts concerning the "retroactive power" of marriages in relation to antenuptial children. Their observation is that "the bastard remained incapable of inheriting land even though his parents had become husband and wife and thereby made him capable of receiving holy orders and, in all probability, of taking a share in the movable goods of his parents". In a footnote the authors acknowledge that they know of "no text that proves that the bastard legitimated by the marriage of his parents could succeed to a "bairn's part" of the father's goods" but they say "it seems quite certain that the church courts must have tried to enforce their own theory within a sphere that was their own and we doubt very much whether the king's court would have prohibited them from so doing" (vol ii pp. 277, 378). The question whether the rule should be incorporated into the law of England, which had been the subject of such a sharp difference of opinion between the ecclesiastical courts and the temporal courts, seems to have provided the basis for a controversy which continued, in some form or other, for nearly seven hundred years until it was brought to an end by the Legitimation Act of 1926.

These observations may not be thought to throw a great deal of light on the present problem but what is of importance to notice is that although, more particularly in earlier times, legitimacy was of great importance in matters involving questions of descent and inheritance, that was by no means its only importance. It was of importance concerning the status of the child itself, in relation to the rights and duties of the child and his parents inter se and with respect to the child's position and name as a member of the family. "From legitimacy flow many important considerations, the right of inheritance, the right of bearing the father's name, kinship and family ties, the right to be maintained, educated, and protected" (Eversley - Domestic Relations - 6th ed. (1951) p. 317).

The canon and civil law principle of legitimation by subsequent marriage, naturally enough, found ready acceptance in the countries of Western Europe. In more recent times it has been incorporated into the laws of such countries as England, the United States of America, New Zealand and the Australian States which did not find their origin in the civil law. But it is apparent that this is not the only form or process known to civilized communities by which an antenuptial child may be legitimated. As already pointed out it may be accomplished by a special Act of a competent legislature. It may, in New South Wales, be accomplished by an adoption pursuant to the Child Welfare Act, 1939-1956 though, it would seem, legitimation qua both parents would be effected only if the application for adoption be made jointly by the parents of the child after their marriage. No doubt in that case the presumption under s. 168 of that Act would be that the adopted child was the lawful child of their marriage. In some of the American States legitimation may be accomplished by judicial decree, in another by written instrument recorded in the same manner as a deed and, in yet another, by a notarial act. Again, in some of the States, public acknowledgement by a father of his illegitimate child and the receiving of it into his family with the consent of his wife is said to establish the child as legitimate. I mention these matters for one purpose only; they establish that legitimation is not necessarily associated with marriage and the matters referred to seem to justify the conclusion that a law with respect to legitimation is not, per se, a law with respect to marriage. On the other hand, they indicate to my mind that such a law is not, considered alone, a law with respect to descent or inheritance for it does not, of its own force, provide for or determine the devolution of property. It is, of course, true that if, and as long as, inheritance laws provide for the devolution of the property of a deceased intestate for the benefit of his next-of-kin an antenuptial legitimated child will share. But this is merely because his legitimation enables him to assert that he is within the general class of next-of-kin. Nevertheless, if the power to prescribe the rules of inheritance resides in one legislative body and a power to make laws with respect to legitimation resides in another, the former body may, if it so wishes, so alter the rules of inheritance as to exclude such a child from benefit just as it might, if it so chose, so alter the rules as to exclude a wife. None of these observations, however, establish that ss. 89, 90 and 91 of the Marriage Act are laws with respect to marriage and it is, I think, necessary to consider a little more closely the purpose, character and effect of the principle which, in the first place, s. 89 purports to introduce.

The introduction of legitimation by subsequent marriage into Roman law is ascribed to the Emperor Constantine. First of all it was, it seems, intended as a temporary law but, with some modification, it was "made perpetual by Justinian". The history of its development in Roman law and its adoption in other countries is traced in the article by Sir Dennis FitzPatrick previously referred to (see also Law Quarterly Review (1920) vol. 36 p. 255). According to Lord Fraser, whose observations are quoted in the latter article "the object of its Imperial authors - an object which it accomplished - was to put down that system of concubinage which had grown into almost universal favour throughout the Empire, and which the law regarded as semi-marriage". The same view is shared by the learned author of the earlier article who observes that "it is to be gathered from the texts, which have come down to us, that among the Romans the parents of natural children were commonly desirous of raising them to the higher status, and it is understood that this method of effecting that object was devised, partly at least, with a view to providing an additional inducement to parties living in the state of concubinage, which was even then condemned by the Christian teachers, to exchange that state for the state of matrimony" (Journal of Comparative Legislation N.S. vol. vi at p. 29). When the principle was first introduced it applied with respect to children then in existence but "Justinian removed this limitation". Nevertheless "the rule continued to be applicable only to children born of concubinage to the exclusion of children born of those looser connexions which were strongly condemned by the law". But where the rule operated "the marriage effected the legitimation ipso jure ". This was the origin of the rule which has found its way into the law of so many countries though modifications in the rule and variations in its application may be noticed from time to time whilst fictions were introduced to explain how it was that legitimation of pre-nuptial children came to be accomplished by the marriage of the parents. According to Pollock and Maitland "the disabilities annexed to bastardy are regarded by the canonists as a punishment inflicted on offending parents" (Vol. ii p. 376) and Tindal L.C.J. in Birtwhistle v. Vardill [1] observed that the canon law regarded the subsequent marriage as evidence of the parents' repentance of their former sin and, on that account, by positive rule of law, it operated to legitimate any antenuptial child. Scottish law, however, seems to have come to regard the subsequent marriage as conclusive evidence of an earlier marriage prior to the child's birth. But in each case the legitimation was inseparably bound up with the marriage and was accomplished irrespective of the intention of the parties to the marriage. Of course, one would not readily suppose that parents marrying after the birth of a child would not desire to legitimate it but in a footnote to his article previously mentioned Sir Dennis FitzPatrick observed that he had "come across certain references to the subject from which it would appear that parents of illegitimate children in France are by no means so anxious to legitimate them as the authors of the code seem to have expected". I mention this only to stress the fact that legitimation in such a case, and the legitimation for which s. 89 provides, is accomplished by force of the marriage itself. It is inextricably bound up with it and it is impossible either for the parents, or for the child, to avoid that consequence of subsequent marriage. Indeed, legitimation by subsequent marriage became so much a feature of the marriage itself that in some countries "where the subsequent marriage was of a ceremonial character, it appears to have been not unusual to have the children present and taken from under the mother's cloak, as if they had been born in wedlock". This practice is said to have been adopted, no doubt for more abundant caution, when John of Gaunt married his third wife (Law Quarterly Review (1920) vol. 36 p. 267). Such children were "mantle children" but the unconvincing piece of legerdemain which the practice involved received little recognition in England even in the very early days (see also Pollock and Maitland vol. ii, p. 397).

1. (1840) 7 Cl. & F. 895, at p. 936 [7 E.R. 1308, at pp. 1322, 1323].

It is possible to see that in England there has always been a distinction between what may perhaps loosely be called legitimacy for the purpose of inheritance to land and legitimacy for other purposes. It may be that the distinction has not always been clearly defined but it has persisted and, indeed, it persisted in one form until the Legitimation Act, 1926. In modern times the distinction is to be observed in the case of persons who, though not born in wedlock, are legitimate according to the law of their parents' domicil at the time of birth. The existence of this distinction led the author of one of the articles previously referred to "to call attention to the peculiar status in England of a child who is born in Scotland of unmarried parents domiciled there and is afterwards legitimated by their subsequent marriage. In England", it is then said, "this child is partially legitimate; he is not legitimate there for the purpose of succession to real property in England, the descent of which is governed by the law of England, but he is legitimate in England for all other purposes" (Law Quarterly Review (1920) vol. 36 p. 261). These observations are founded upon the opinions of the Judges in Birtwhistle v. Vardill [1] where it was held that a child born in Scotland, of parents domiciled there, who at the time of his birth were not married, but who afterwards intermarried in Scotland, though legitimate by the law of Scotland, could not take, as heir, lands of his father in England. But I find it difficult to understand how it can be said that a child may be partly legitimate and partly illegitimate or - in spite of the fact that I have used the expression loosely - how a child may be legitimate for some purposes and illegitimate for others. The true explanation of the decision in the case mentioned is, I think, given by Lord Brougham in the following passage: "The learned Judges have given no opinion upon the question whether or not a person legitimated by subsequent marriage in a country where that law prevails, is therefore legitimate all the world over: nor, perhaps, was it incumbent on them to argue this for the purpose of answering the question put to them by the House. They contend that the statute, or rather the common law recognized and declared by the statute, requires something beyond mere legitimacy to make an heir to English real estate. They agree with the Court below, that legitimacy alone is not sufficient; it must be as was there said (5 Barn. and Cress. 454), legitimacy sub modo, - legitimacy and being born in wedlock. Consequently they appear plainly to admit, that a person may be legitimate for all other purposes, and yet incapable of taking land by descent - that we ought not to say "a man's eldest lawful son is his heir at law", but "his eldest lawful son if born in lawful wedlock" " [2] . Later, in In re Goodman's Trusts [3] , the Court of Appeal held that a child born before wedlock, of parents who were at her birth domiciled in Holland, but legitimated according to the law of Holland by the subsequent marriage of her parents, was entitled to a share in the personal estate of an intestate dying in England as one of her next-of-kin under the Statute of Distributions. In the course of his reasons James L.J. referred to Vardill's Case [1] and said: "What the assembled Judges said in Doe v. Vardill, and what the Lords held, was, that the case of heirship to English land was a peculiar exception to the rights incident to that character and status of legitimacy, which was admitted by both Judges and Lords to be the true character and status of the claimant. It was only an additional instance of the many anomalies which at that time affected the descent of land. Legitimate relationship in the first degree was of no avail if the claimant were an alien, or if he were of the half-blood, or in the direct ascending line, which, pace Professor Blackstone, were precious absurdities in the English law of real property. But in this particular case, the exception is, at all events, plausible. The English heirship, the descent of English land, required not only that the man should be legitimate, but as it were porphyro-genitus, born legitimate within the narrowest pale of English legitimacy. Heirship is an incident of land, depending on local law, the law of the country, the county, the manor, and even of the particular property itself, the forma doni. Kinship is an incident of the person, and universal. It appears to me that a statement of the law so given, and so accepted nearly fifty years ago, which has been adopted without question by jurists as a correct statement of English adhesion to the universal law and comity of nations, is not to be questioned at this time by any tribunal short of the House of Lords, and I should humbly think not by them" [1] . (See also per Cotton L.J. [1] and per Romer J. in In re Bischoffsheim: Cassel v. Grant [2] and Bamgbose v. Daniel [3] ). These authorities, which recognized the right of a person legitimate according to the law of his parents' domicile at the time of his birth to share in his father's personal estate in England, but which denied him the right to inherit his father's English land unless born in wedlock, show that the rules concerning succession to English land have been worked out on very special principles. Accordingly it does not necessarily follow that because a person is disqualified as an heir to English land he must be regarded by English law as the illegitimate offspring of his parents. If he were to be so regarded the anomalies would be obvious as James L.J. so colourfully pointed out in Goodman's Case [4] : "What is the rule which the English law adopts and applies to a non-English child?" This is a question of international comity and international law. According to that law as recognized, and that comity as practised, in all other civilized communities, the status of a person, his legitimacy or illegitimacy, is to be determined everywhere by the law of the country of his origin - the law under which he was born. It appears to me that it would require a great force of argument derived from legal principles, or great weight of authority clear and distinct, to justify us in holding that our country stands in this respect aloof in barbarous insularity from the rest of the civilized world. On principle, it appears to me that every consideration goes strongly to show, at least, that we ought not so to stand. The family relation is at the foundation of all society, and it would appear almost an axiom that the family relation, once duly constituted by the law of any civilized country, should be respected and acknowledged by every other member of the great community of nations. England has been for centuries a country of hospitality and commerce. It has opened its shores to thousands of political refugees and religious exiles, fleeing from their enemies and persecutors. It has opened its ports to merchants of the whole world, and has by wise laws induced and encouraged them to settle in our marts. But would it not be shocking if such a man, seeking a home in this country, with his family of legitimated children, should find that the English hospitality was as bad as the worst form of the persecution from which he had escaped, by destroying his family ties, by declaring that the relation of father and child no longer existed, that his rights and duties and powers as a father had ceased, that the child of his parental affection and fond pride, whom he had taught to love, honour, and obey him, for whom he had toiled and saved, was to be thenceforth, in contemplation of the law of his new country, a fatherless bastard? Take the case of a foreigner resident abroad, with such a child. If that child were abducted from his guardianship and brought to this country, can any one doubt that the Courts of this country would recognize his paternal right and guardianship, and order the child to be delivered to any person authorized by him? But suppose, instead of sending, he were to come himself to this country in person, would it be possible to hold that he would lose his right to the guardianship of the child in this country because of the historical or mythical legend that the English barons and earls many centuries ago cried out in Latin, Nolumus leges Angliae mutare? Can it be possible that a Dutch father, stepping on board a steamer at Rotterdam with his dear and lawful child, should on his arrival at the port of London find that the child had become a stranger in blood and in law, and a bastard, filius nullius?

1. (1840) 7 Cl. & F. 895 [7 E.R. 1308]. 2. (1840) 7 Cl. & F., at p. 955 [7 E. R., at p. 1330]. 3. (1881) 17 Ch. D. 266. 4. (1840) 7 Cl. & F. 895 [7 E.R. 1308]. 5. (1881) 17 Ch. D., at p. 299. 6. (1881) 17 Ch. D., at p. 299. 7. [1948] 1 Ch. 79. 8. [1955] A.C. 107. 9. (1881) 17 Ch. D. 266.

"It may be suggested that that would not apply to a mere transient visit or a temporary commorancy, during which the foreign character of the visitor and his family would be recognized, with all its incidents and consequences, but that it would only apply to a man electing to have a permanent English domicil. But what could, in that view, be more shocking than that a man, having such a family residing with him, perhaps for years, in this country as his lawful family, recognized as such by every Court in the kingdom, being minded at last to make this country his permanent domicil, should thereby bastardize his children; and that he could re-legitimate them by another change of domicil from London to Edinburgh?" [1] . It is, I think, obvious that the expressions "rules with respect to inheritance" and "rules with respect to legitimacy" are by no means synonymous expressions. It is, however, equally clear that where the right to inherit depends upon heirship or kinship the rules as to legitimacy will be material matters for consideration. But it would be quite wrong to test legitimacy by the capacity to inherit either goods or land. A person may inherit because he is legitimate; he is not legitimate merely because he is qualified to inherit. If it were otherwise it would be open to the Parliament of any State of the Commonwealth to alter the inheritance laws of the State and so bastardize the offspring of a marriage pursuant to the Commonwealth Act. The States may, of course, alter the inheritance laws so as to exclude the issue of a lawful marriage so contracted from benefit upon the intestacy of either parent but, if this were to happen, it would afford no warrant for characterizing the children as illegitimate.

With considerations such as these in mind I find it impossible to divorce rules defining legitimacy by reference to marriage from the general body of laws relating to marriage. They are inextricably interwoven and, as far as I can see, always have been. It seems natural enough to regard children born during the subsistence of a valid marriage as legitimate but they are so because the law says so and, undoubtedly, such a law must be, in my view, a law with respect to marriage. It is of no consequence that any such child was the result of antenuptial intercourse for, as Blackstone says, the law is "not so strict as to require that the child shall be begotten after lawful wedlock" (Commentaries vol. i p. 454). Can it be doubted that the constitutional power to make laws with respect to marriage would authorize a like prescription or that a State law, purporting to characterize as illegitimate all issue of marriages pursuant to the Commonwealth Act except those both begotten and born after marriage, would be invalid? In my view, the prescription of rules defining the conditions of legitimacy of the issue of parties to a marriage pursuant to the Commonwealth Statute are comprehended by the expression "laws with respect to marriage" and the provisions of s. 89, having regard to the history of the rule in question, its purpose and its relation to and significance in the matrimonial relationship constitute a law with respect to that subject matter.

Section 90 operates in the case of marriages which take place out of Australia and where the father and the child was not domiciled in Australia at the time of the marriage. But when it is seen that what the section does is to give to the matrimonial relationship in Australia a like legitimating effect it is clear that it is no more than complementary to s. 89. Accordingly the foregoing observations apply with equal force to its provisions.

The principal objection to s. 91 is that it does not deal with marriage at all; it deals, it is said, with what may perhaps be regarded as a contradiction in terms - "void marriages". But it is a provision which may be said, in one sense, to qualify, upon certain conditions, the voidness of the so-called marriage. It introduces a very old principle and one not unknown to the canon law. Pollock and Maitland refer to the principle (vol. ii pp. 375, 376) and add: "It was long before the canonists worked out to the full their theory about these putative marriages. Some would have held that if there was good faith in the one consort and guilty knowledge in the other, the child might be legitimate as regards one of his parents, illegitimate as regards the other. Others held that such lopsided legitimacy was impossible". However the impossible seems to have been accomplished in America in the States of Michigan, Nebraska and New York where in the case of a bigamous union, the children of the union are said to be legitimate only in relation to that parent who was legally capable of contracting marriage. To my mind it is not a valid objection that s. 91 does not depend for its operation on the existence of a valid marriage. In view of what has already been said about the content of the legislative power I think it is sufficient to say in justification of the section that, in the circumstances contemplated, it gives to the form of marriage the effect which it prescribes even though the form does not result in a marriage which is, itself, valid.

In my opinion the demurrer to the statement of the claim should be allowed.

The demurrer by the Commonwealth to the statement of claim delivered by the Attorney-General for the State of Victoria alleging the invalidity of Pt VI and s. 94 of the Commonwealth Marriage Act 1961 requires consideration of the power of the Commonwealth Parliament to make laws with respect to marriage (s. 51 (xxi.)). The principal provisions of Pt VI of the Act provide for legitimacy in a case where parents of a child born before marriage marry afterwards (s. 89) and in a case where a child is born to parents whose marriage was void but was believed by one of them on reasonable grounds to be a valid marriage (s. 91). There is also a provision legitimating a child born before marriage to parents who marry outside Australia where, according to the law of the father's then domicile, the marriage would legitimate an earlier-born child (s. 90). Provision is also made for a person to obtain a declaration of legitimacy (s. 92). These provisions are substantially different from those of the law of the State. Section 94, which is in Pt VII relating to offences, makes bigamy an offence. Sub-section (1) is in these terms: "A person who is married shall not go through a form or ceremony of marriage with any person". It is also an offence for a person to go through a ceremony of marriage with a person who is married, knowing, or having reasonable grounds to believe, that the latter person is married (sub-s. (4)). There is an exception in the case of a person going through a ceremony of marriage with that person's spouse (sub-s. (5)) and particular defences are provided (sub-ss. (2) and (3)). These provisions are substantially the same as those of the law of the State.

It was first argued by the Solicitor-General for the State that the power of the Commonwealth Parliament is no greater than if, instead of the head of power being indicated by the word "marriage", as it is, the words "solemnization of marriage" had been used. Such a limited interpretation would be contrary to well-settled principles of constitutional construction. The argument was based, however, upon the existence of another head of power, viz. s. 51 (xxii.) "Divorce and matrimonial causes; and in relation thereto, parental rights, and the custody and guardianship of infants" which it was claimed showed that s. 51 (xxi.) had a restricted meaning. Although I am disposed to think that had there been no s. 51 (xxii.) the marriage power would of itself have covered divorce, I do not think the existence of s. 51 (xxii.) requires the implication that s. 51 (xxi.) is limited to determining who may marry and the forms and ceremonies of marriage. The power must extend to the mutual rights and obligations of spouses unless it be that State law could deprive marriage according to Commonwealth law of any legal significance except for Commonwealth purposes (e.g., divorce, income tax, estate duty, etc.). It would be quite unrealistic to construe s. 51 (xxi.) and (xxii.) together as according power to provide for the vows with which marriage shall begin and the grounds for divorce to bring it to an end but as having nothing to do with the obligations one to another of those who marry, the disregard of which obligations is the basis for divorce.

There was, however, a narrower ground of the State's attack on Pt VI - that is, that even if the word "marriage" be construed more broadly, Pt VI is not concerned with the content of marriage in the sense of the mutual rights and duties of those who marry but with a different subject matter, viz. illegitimacy arising from birth outside marriage. For the Commonwealth it was claimed, as I think on solid grounds, that this was a misdescription of Pt VI because what is attempted does not go beyond dealing with the effect of marriage upon the legitimacy of the children born out of wedlock to those marrying (ss. 89 and 90) or going through the ceremony of marriage (s. 91). The Solicitor-General for the Commonwealth, argued "Part VI of the Marriage Act 1961 is a law "with respect to marriage", because it determines the legal effects, in relation to the progeny of a man and a woman, of a marriage, or a putative marriage, between them". Starting with the contention that the Commonwealth Parliament could, by a law with respect to marriage, provide that children of a marriage according to Commonwealth law should be legitimate for all purposes, the argument proceeded that ss. 89 and 90 do no more than attribute to the marriage of the parents an effect with regard to themselves and their earlier-born children, and that s. 91 attributes a particular effect to a marriage ceremony when one party believes that the ceremony did result in marriage, defining the relationship of those marrying and their later-born children. What seems to me to be the principal objection to this argument is that to speak of a person being legitimate for all purposes means, in the context of the constitutional division between Commonwealth and State legislative power, little more than saying that the person is legitimate for any purpose of State law and that what is meant can only be fully determined by reference to the various State laws that attach legal significance to legitimacy (e.g., the descent of property upon intestacy). I have reached the conclusion, however, that if there were a State law which enacted that for all purposes of State law an illegitimate child shall be deemed to be a legitimate child of its parents, there would still remain a well-recognized distinction between legitimacy and illegitimacy independently of the extent to which Commonwealth Parliament may adopt legitimacy as a legal criterion for purposes within its legislative power. Whatever might have been the case long ago, few people now regard marriage as the means of providing successors to property. In these days when persons who are concerned with the devolution of their property after death usually dispose of it by will, the only succession that those who marry are really concerned with is that a family and name should be continued by the birth of children. I regard the description of a person as legitimate as meaning something more than that he or she is entitled to such advantages as State law gives to persons born who are legitimate. It means that the child has a family and a name. It is not filius nullius; it is the child of a marriage. The observations made by Sir William Scott in 1795 in Lindo v. Belisario [1] - "A marriage is not every casual commerce; nor would it be so even in the law of nature. A mere casual commerce, without the intention of cohabitation, and bringing up of children, would not constitute marriage under any supposition. But when two persons agree to have that commerce for the procreation and bringing up of children, and for such lasting cohabitation, that, in a state of nature, would be a marriage" [2] - in the emphasis that is given to the place of children in the conception of marriage point, I think, to something that is well within the meaning of the word "marriage" in the Commonwealth Constitution. I would, therefore, regard a Commonwealth law providing that the children of a valid marriage should be legitimate for all purposes as being a law with respect to marriage and not as being a law with respect to property. It would deal with the relationship of those marrying to the children of the marriage and this, I think, would be within the marriage power notwithstanding that it would relate to the status of the children as well. Many laws have, however, several aspects. Accepting, as I do, the premise of the argument of the Solicitor-General for the Commonwealth, I am also ready to go further and to regard ss. 89 and 90 as being laws with respect to marriage because they relate to the effect of marriage upon the relationship of those who marry and their children. They provide that the marriage of the parents of a natural child makes the child a child of the marriage. I have had greater difficulty about s. 91 because it may be said to be concerned with the effect of something that is not marriage upon the relationship of parents and child. Nevertheless, because Commonwealth power does include determining what effect should be given to the ceremony of marriage which the Act provides, I have reached the conclusion that s. 91 is also within power. Cf. Pt VIII of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1959 Cth and particularly s. 83.

1. (1795) 1 Hag. Con. 216 [161 E.R. 530]. 2. (1795) 1 Hag. Con., at p. 231 [161 E.R., at p. 535].

Before leaving Pt VI, I would add that I do not regard its provisions as interfering with the power of the States to determine how property should pass upon death, or any of the other matters for which State legislation has adopted legitimacy as a criterion. The only limitation that I think flows from the validity to Pt VI is that a State cannot provide that a person legitimate by Commonwealth law is illegitimate for any purpose of State law. Of course, so long as State laws do adopt legitimacy as a criterion, they will, if Pt VI is valid, operate differently after the coming into operation of the Commonwealth Act from the way in which they did previously. This, however, does not mean that the Commonwealth has invaded a field outside its power. What will happen is not in any way different from any other case where a valid Commonwealth law changes a status that State law has adopted as a criterion for some purpose of its own (e.g. a State law prohibiting the appointment of a bankrupt as a director of a company will operate in accordance with the definition of bankruptcy adopted by Commonwealth law for the time being).

For these reasons I consider that the attack upon Pt VI fails.

With regard to s. 94, I am satisfied that it is within Commonwealth legislative power with regard to marriage to make it an offence for persons to go through a ceremony of marriage when one of them is married to another. In support of the contrary conclusion, we were referred to the preamble of the Statute of James I of 1603 creating the crime of bigamy, which it was said showed that bigamy became a crime because it was regarded both as a sin and a vice involving "great dishonour of God and the undoing of divers honest men's children". Some emphasis was also placed upon the proviso in the Act which protected those who had married a second time if the first marriage had been declared void or dissolved by an ecclesiastical court. It was argued that this history indicated that the crime of bigamy cannot be regarded merely as a law for the protection of marriage but has in it elements outside Commonwealth legislative power. However the matter might have appeared in 1603 - and I am far from thinking that the Statute of James I was not a law for the protection of marriage - it is beyond question that the offence created by Commonwealth law is committed when a person who is married to one person goes through a ceremony of marriage with another, and I have found myself unable to grasp the notion that a law which clearly upon its face is for the protection of marriage in accordance with law must be treated as outside the marriage power because the conduct that is made punishable was three and a half centuries ago made a crime on the grounds that it was considered to be an offence against God and society except in cases where an ecclesiastical court had disposed of the first marriage. As Evatt J. said in Thomas v. The King [1] : "The bigamy enactment is of vast importance, because it is designed to protect an existing status as well as to protect innocent and unsuspecting persons who intend to assume such a status, and, of course, the children of either union" [1] .

1. (1937) 59 C.L.R. 279. 2. (1937) 59 C.L.R., at p. 316.

In my opinion the demurrer succeeds and the action fails.

I propose to consider first the general scope of the power to make laws with respect to marriage. Secondly, to consider whether s. 89 of the Commonwealth Marriage Act 1961 is such a law; and, for that purpose, to deal briefly with legitimacy, illegitimacy and legitimation as legal concepts and with the doctrine of legitimation by subsequent matrimony. Thirdly, to consider s. 91 of the Act, and the doctrine of putative marriages that it embodies, to see whether it is, in the constitutional sense, a law with respect to marriage. And fourthly, to deal with the provisions of s. 94 concerning bigamy.

The word "marriage" can mean, just as can the Latin nuptiae or the French mariage, either the act of marrying, that is the promises and rites by which the state of matrimony is created, or that state itself. I consider that in the Constitution the word embraces both senses, comprehending wedlock as well as wedding, matrimony as well as espousals. It refers to marriage as an institution, but as a lawyer understands it rather than with its meaning for an anthropologist or sociologist.

The Constitution is an instrument operating according to English law, written in language expressive of the concepts of that law, an instrument formed in 1900 for the government of a people who had inherited that law. The scope of the powers it gives are not be to ascertained by merely analytical and a priori reasoning from the abstract meaning of words. Constitutional interpretation is affected by established usages of legal language. But marriage is so fundamental and so universal an institution of society that it is not easy to set limits to a power to make laws with respect to it. Its legal consequences reach far into many fields of law. Both Sir Robert Garran and Sir William Harrison Moore alluded to this question in passages that have been referred to in the judgments of other members of the Court. And, more recently, Doctor Anstey Wynes has referred to the same doubts in a suggestive paragraph in his useful work on Australian constitutional powers.

It has been suggested that the Constitution speaks of marriage only in the form recognized by English law in 1900. The word, it is said, is to be read as defined by the famous phrase of Lord Penzance in Hyde v. Hyde [1] , "the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others"; and that therefore the legislative power does not extend to marriages that differ essentially from the monogamous marriage of Christianity. That seems to me an unwarranted limitation. Marriage can have a wider meaning for law. For example, Justinian described it broadly as the union of husband and wife involving the habitual intercourse of daily life, nuptiae sive matrimonium est viri et mulieris coniunctio, individuam conseutudinem vitae continens (Inst. 1, 9, 1.); and he said that those citizens are joined together in lawful wedlock who are united according to law, qui secundum praecepta legum coeunt (Inst. 1, 10, 1.). And Higgins J. in the course of his judgment in the Brewery Labels Case [2] - that it was a dissenting judgment is immaterial for present purposes - said: "Under the power to make laws with respect to marriage I should say that the Parliament could prescribe what unions are to be regarded as marriages" [3] - and later, he was speaking of trade marks: "The usage in 1900 gives us the central type; it does not give us the circumference of the power" [3] . I express no view on whether, theoretically, it would be within the power of the Commonwealth Parliament to make polygamy lawful in Australia. That question has absolutely no reality. But for some purposes, including the legitimacy of children and rights of succession, our law does recognize polygamous, or potentially polygamous, marriages contracted in countries where such marriages are lawful by persons domiciled there: see e.g. Bamgbose v. Daniel [4] ; and compare Sowa v. Sowa [5] . If, instead of leaving the resolution of such matters to the principles of comity and private international law, the Commonwealth Parliament were to legislate expressly for the recognition by Australian courts of such unions when lawful by domiciliary law, such an enactment would, I should think, be within its power. And a law dealing with the tribal marriages of aboriginal inhabitants of Australia might also, I would think, be within power. Such marriages can give rise to difficulties (see University of Western Australia Annual Law Review, vol. v p. 326) - but perhaps mainly in the Territories, where there are no limitations on Commonwealth legislative power.

1. (1866) L.R. 1 P. & D., at p. 133. 2. (1908) 6 C.L.R. 469. 3. (1908) 6 C.L.R., at p. 610. 4. (1908) 6 C.L.R., at p. 610. 5. [1955] A.C. 107. 6. [1961] P. 70.

I have mentioned these matters, not because they are directly relevant here, but to make it clear that I do not think that the Commonwealth power over marriage is to be narrowly construed. It is plenary. And, as the Chief Justice, then Dixon J., pointed out in Bank of N.S.W. v. The Commonwealth [1] , when a single word is used - as the single word "marriage" is here - to assign a subject to Commonwealth power it is not to be read as limiting or defining the kind of laws that may be made with respect to that subject. Nevertheless, the word used must be read as fully descriptive of the subject in respect of which laws may be made. As Higgins J. put it it states a subject for legislation not a peg on which the Parliament may hang legislation: see Ex parte Walsh & Johnson; In re Yates [2] . That is of the utmost importance in this case. Marriage has so many consequences in law, and the status of husband and wife has so many attributes in so many departments of law, that it is easy to think of any law that gives a new consequence to the estate of matrimony, or which alters or enlarges the rights, claims and immunities that give a legal context and substance to the status of husband and wife, as a law with respect to marriage. But, as will appear, that, I think, is a wrong approach. When any enactment is challenged on the ground that it is outside the power over a particular subject, a decision whether or not that is so must ultimately depend upon what exactly is the effect of the enactment upon that subject, in this case upon marriage. The Chief Justice has dealt with this in his judgment, which I have had the advantage of reading; and with what he has said on this aspect I respectfully and entirely agree.

1. (1948) 76 C.L.R., at p. 333. 2. (1925) 37 C.L.R., at p. 117.

We share in the inheritance of European Christian civilisation. We derive from it a concept of marriage that is universal in all systems of law that participate in that inheritance. From the time when the canon law was codified by Gratian the marriage law of the Church was a topic for jurists throughout Christendom. From their common understanding of it much has come that is important for this case. The matters about which the Commonwealth may to-day make laws with respect to marriage are those of the kind generally considered, for comparative law and private international law, as being the subjects of a country's marriage laws.

Marriage law is not a matter of precise demarcation; but it is a recognized topic of juristic classification. In England the marriage law was administered in the ecclesiastical courts until the middle of the nineteenth century. It was based upon canon law as it was before the Council of Trent, but modified and circumscribed by statutes. Significantly, those statutes came to be known as "Marriage Acts". This helped to mark out marriage law as a topic for English lawyers. Among such Acts, passed before 1900, were 32 Hen. VIII, c. 38 (1540), concerning pre-contracts and the degrees of consanguinity; 12 Car. II, c. 33 (1660), made permanent by 13 Car. II, c. 11, confirming marriages contracted "since the beginning of the late Troubles" according to enactments introduced during the Commonwealth; 26 Geo. II, c. 33 (1753), Lord Hardwicke's Act against clandestine marriages; 4 Geo. IV, c. 76, the Marriage Act of 1823; 5 & 6 Wm. IV, c. 54 (1835), Lord Lyndhurst's Act making marriages within the prohibited degrees void, not voidable; 6 & 7 Wm. IV, c. 85, the Marriage Act of 1836, which among other provisions permitted marriages at register offices; 19 & 20 Vict., c. 119, the Marriage and Registration Act of 1856. Then came the various Matrimonial Causes Acts. These began in 1857 with 20 & 21 Vict., c. 85, which provided, for the first time in England, for dissolution of marriage by judicial decree.

In the Australian Colonies too there were Marriage Acts, before Federation. And, both in England and Australia, this statute law had given a civil character to the contract of marriage, while recognizing the place that religious rites might have in its solemnization. Statute law prescribed the conditions and circumstances in which men and women might enter into matrimony, the method of doing so and the consequences of incapacities, impediments and informalities. It thus dealt with who might be married and how. Rules concerning these matters, and with them divorce from matrimonial obligations and dissolution of the bonds of matrimony, constitute marriage law in a primary sense. It is a body of rules relating to the creation or the termination of the status of husband and wife, as distinct from the legal attributes, incidents and consequences that attach and give a substance to that status.

It was suggested in argument that to restrict the power to legislate with respect to marriage to subjects that constitute marriage law in this primary sense, would be to give it a narrow application. But to think of marriage forms and ceremonies, capacities and consents as a small area for law making is to take much for granted. The statute law of marriage may seem to be in a small compass. But it embodies the results of a long process of social history, it codifies much complicated learning, it sets at rest some famous controversies. Marriage is now in law a consensual compact. But it is not dissoluble at will; and it must be celebrated by an authorized person, and he may be a clergyman. "Irregular" marriages by verba de praesenti or verba de futuro subsequente copula are no longer valid. We have no need to-day of the learning so impressively marshalled by Willes J. in Beamish v. Beamish [1] , or of the reflection of it in New South Wales in Reg. v. Roberts [2] . If we ever need it, it is only in such unusual circumstances as occurred in Victoria in Quick v. Quick (or O'Connell) [1] , or when an echo of battles long ago about "common law marriages" comes to us from abroad, as recently it did for Phillimore J. in Lazarewicz (otherwise Fadanelli) v. Lazarewicz [2] . Lawyers can forget, and mostly do forget, the refined canonical learning about pre-contracts and direment and prohibitive impediments. Statute law now tells us who are capable of marrying. The history of the degrees of consanguinity and affinity does not trouble us. The days are long gone when they were, to use Pollock and Maitland's words, "enveloped in exuberant learning," "a maze of flighty fancies and misapplied logic" - when, for example, a man might not, without a dispensation, marry a relative within the seventh degree or his godfather's daughter. All this elaborate doctrine was pruned by statute in the time of Henry VIII. The circumstances may be found in the judgments of the Queen's Bench in Reg. v. Chadwick and Reg. v. St. Giles in the Fields [3] . The prohibited degrees are now tabulated in the Act. These are all large tracts for law.

1. (1861) 9 H.L.C. 274 [11 E.R. 735]. 2. (1850) 1 Legge 544. 3. [1953] V.L.R. 224. 4. [1962] P. 171. 5. (1847) 11 Q.B. 173 [116 E.R. 441].

But, large though they are, the elements of capacity, consent and celebration, which constitute so much of the marriage law in its primary sense, do not, I think, exhaust the subject of the Commonwealth power. Commonwealth law can, in my opinion, extend at least to the personal relationships that are the consequences of marriage - cohabitation, conjugal society, all that is meant by consortium, the mutual society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other. These are of the very nature of marriage. So far as they can be regulated by law without impairing the essence of marriage, laws about them would, I consider, properly be called laws with respect to marriage. Even if the Constitution had not contained an express power to legislate with respect to divorce and matrimonial causes, I would have thought that laws prescribing consequences for breaches of the personal obligations that are inherent in the marriage relationship were within the power of the Commonwealth Parliament. And, I am inclined to think, the Commonwealth power would extend to matters concerning the support and care of children, duties that are commonly considered to be inherent in the institution of matrimony. The procreation and upbringing of children is set down in the Prayer Book first among the causes for which matrimony was ordained. If an authority of a different kind be preferred, Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764), in the article on canon law, said: Le mariage dans l'ordre civil est une union légitime de l'homme et de la femme, pour avoir des enfans, pour les élever, et pour leur assurer les droits des proprietés, sous l'autorité de la loi. And Puffendorf said that "the natural and regular end of marriage is the obtaining of children whom we may, with certainty, call our own": Law of Nature & Nations vi, I, 15.

When one turns from personal relationships between spouses and alimentary obligations to the consequences of marriage in other fields, different considerations seem to me to arise. Marriage law determines what unions are valid marriages creating the status of husband and wife. To that status extrinsic law can from time to time affix all kinds of consequences, varying from the rights of one spouse in the property of the other to the eligibility of a woman to hold a publican's licence. Marriage has always had important consequences in the law of property. Indeed the need for public recognition of marriages for establishing descents and securing inheritance was one of the objections to clandestine marriages, at all events for the temporal lawyers. But whether the regulation of the property rights and interests of the spouses, and of the claims of their offspring to a patrimony, would be within the power of the Commonwealth seems to me very doubtful. Most systems of law contain rules about matrimonial property. But their very variety indicates that none of them is, as personal relationships and family obligations are, of the essence of the estate of matrimony. In English law, for example, dower did not originally accrue to the wife by virtue of the marriage, but by express endowment at the door of the church.

The learned Solicitor-General for the Commonwealth did not hesitate to say, quite fittingly in the course of his persuasive argument, that the Commonwealth power extended into the field of property rights. He suggested, as I understood him, that it would reach to such matters as married women's property and testators' family maintenance law, that it would enable the Commonwealth to adopt for Australia a matrimonial property system providing for community of goods such as the communauté légale of French law or of matrimonial acquests as in Spain and Latin-America. The question may be brought nearer home by asking whether, dower having been abolished by State law, the Commonwealth Parliament could re-establish dower.

Lord Cottenham in his speech in Reg. v. Millis [1] , speaking of the law in his day, said: "It is obvious that the consequences of a valid marriage must be, - 1st To give to the woman the right of a wife in respect to dower. 2nd To give to the man the right of a husband in the property of the woman. 3rd To give to the issue the right of legitimacy. 4th To impose upon the woman the incapacities of coverture. 5th To make the marriage of either of the parties, living the other, with a third person void" [1] . All these consequences, it may be noted, occur, or formerly occurred, simply "by force of the marriage", an expression used in the Act 4 Geo. IV c. 76 s. 23. And the list of consequences so arising can be elaborated. For example, the Wills Act, 1837 s. 18 provides that a will shall be revoked by marriage, although since 1925 this does not apply to a will made in contemplation of marriage. A woman by marrying becomes incompetent as a witness for the prosecution in criminal proceedings against her husband. Would laws relating to these matters be laws with respect to marriage in the constitutional sense? Is a law defining the share a widow takes upon the death intestate of her husband such a law? Could Commonwealth law regulate the liability of a husband for the torts or contracts of his wife? Would the establishment of a légitime for spouses and the children of their marriage be within Commonwealth power?

1. (1844) 10 Cl. & F. 534 [8 E.R. 844]. 2. (1844) 10 Cl. & F., at p. 878 [8 E.R., at p. 971].

A law which is properly described as a law with respect to a particular subject matter is, of course, none the less so because it also happens to be a law with respect to another subject matter. And we are not to limit the scope of any Commonwealth power by a pre-conception of the extent of the residual powers of the States. But that does not mean that there are no implications in the Constitution. A law which gave to the fact of marriage consequences in the field of property, contract, tort and succession is a law which would have its effect in fields which Commonwealth law cannot cover, fields which for the most part belong to the States. I do not think that I am reverting to an old heresy in thinking that this, although not decisive, is not irrelevant. Speaking generally, the Constitution does not give the national Parliament powers over fundamental private rights. With some exceptions in the economic and international field, those are left to State law. True they are the very matters for which State boundaries might well seem unimportant, the very matters in which it might seem that all Australians should be governed by one law. But the powers that the Constitution gives to the Commonwealth are mostly over topics which involve in some way functions of government or the relationship of subjects to government, not the relationships of subjects to one another in matters of private law. One may regret that this is so. I certainly think it unfortunate that an Australian citizen should be legitimate by the law of one State and illegitimate according to the law of another, and that so fundamental a status should be determined by considerations of State domicile and the principles of private international law. But in fact the States have long had varying laws on this subject. In all States there are provisions for legitimation by subsequent matrimony. But they differ. Three States provide that any child who was born before his parents were married is, subject to certain conditions, rendered legitimate by their marrying. The other three States have followed the canon law whereby a child born out of wedlock is not legitimated by marriage unless at the time of his birth his parents might lawfully have married one another. The child of an adulterous intercourse, for example, is legitimated in one case but not in the other. Does the Constitution enable the Commonwealth Parliament to enter this field and by its overriding power produce uniformity where State laws are in disharmony? Most members of this Court think that it does. I am certainly not sorry that that is their conclusion. But I am unable to agree in it. Section 89 of the Marriage Act is, I consider, beyond Commonwealth power. It is unquestionably a law with respect to legitimation. I do not think that it is a law with respect to marriage.

The relationship between legitimacy and marriage is, of course, obvious. A legitimate child is a child born in lawful wedlock, the offspring of a valid marriage of his parents. As Lord Brougham said in the course of his powerful, but in the result ineffectual, speech on the first occasion when Birtwhistle v. Vardill was before the House of Lords [1] : "It is plain that legitimacy has but one meaning, namely, born in lawful wedlock". "Legitimate, as contradistinguished from legitimated means born in lawful wedlock, and means nothing else". That is indisputable according to our law. The civil law, perhaps, looks more to conception during wedlock than to birth during wedlock, for strictly legitimacy depends on the fact of the parents being married and the child being the offspring of the marriage. But by English law the child of a woman born at any time after her marriage is presumed to be the child of her husband, and the time of procreation is not regarded. The presumption expressed by the maxim " pater est quem nuptiae demonstrant " is rebutted only if access was impossible.

1. (1835) 2 Cl. & F., at pp. 588, 591 [6 E.R. at pp. 1276, 1277].

Legitimacy thus connotes two things; one a personal condition, the other a legal status. In the first it is descriptive of a fact, that is birth in lawful wedlock. The second, the legal status, is a consequence of and involved with the first. It attaches to all those who are in fact born legitimate. The personal condition, birth in wedlock is something that law cannot alter, because law cannot change facts. It can only deal with their consequences. The status of legitimacy, on the other hand, can be conferred by law on persons who did not in fact acquire it by birth; that is to say, persons born illegitimate can, by some process recognized by law as effective for the purpose, be given the same legal status as those born legitimate have. As Lord Merriman expressed it, "Parliament can alter the status of a child, but it cannot alter the chronological order of events": Colquitt v. Colquitt [1] .

The concept of legitimacy and the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children have a place in family law in most legal systems. The ancient Greeks had elaborated the distinction by rules relating to inheritances: see Potter, Antiquities of Greece, pp. 655-659. Roman law added its contribution of patria potestas and the notion of family. In Western European systems to-day a legitimate child, being a member of a family, gets his father's name and rights of aliment, parental care and succession. By our law he takes by inheritance and succession those things that are gained by inheritance and succession - the father's surname - a right, in the case of an eldest son or coparcener daughters, to take real property as heir before heirship was abolished - a right to succeed as next of kin upon intestacy. An illegitimate child, or bastard, does not share in this. He gets his surname not by inheritance but by repute. He has been said to be nullius filius. But this is merely a similitude for a legal consequence. It is obviously not a statement of fact, any more than is the statement that a husband and wife are one person. Lord Watson once said that "It has often been laid down that a bastard is filius nullius. Of that expression it is sufficient to say that it is as true in a legal as it is untrue in a natural sense": Clarke v. Carfin Coal Co. [2] . The origin of the expression seems to have been in Roman law. Justinian said that children born of unions not amounting to lawful marriages were not in patria potestas, but in the position of children born of promiscuous intercourse, who, since their paternity is uncertain, were deemed to have no father: Inst. 1, 10, 12. The common law expressed the result by saying that a bastard was not of heritable blood. He could not be an heir; and no one could inherit through him: but he could acquire property; and he could have heirs of his own to inherit that property. However, inheritance apart, the law recognized the natural relationship of father and child: see R. v. Hodnett [3] where Buller J. said "the rule that a bastard is nullius filius applies only to the case of inheritances; it was so considered by Lord Coke " [1] . Indeed what the law really says is not that the bastard is nobody's son, but that, for the purpose of inheritance, he is as if he were nobody's son. That is how Coke put it: and he got it from Littleton : "He is in law quasi nullius filius, because he cannot be heir to any": Co. Litt., 123.

1. [1891] A.C., at p. 420. 2. (1786) 1 T.R. 96 [99 E.R. 993]. 3. (1786) 1 T.R., at p. 101 [99 E.R., at p. 996].

The common law imposed no obligation upon the father to support his bastard child, but statutory provisions for filiation and maintenance have existed in England since 1576, 18 Eliz. 1 c. 3. In Australia they form part of the statute law of each State. By the canon law a bastard might not, without a dispensation, enter holy orders. And at one period illegitimacy produced other disabilities and ignominies in some civil law systems. Grotius said that "in old times there was a great difference between legitimate and illegitimate issue. The illegitimate were not only excluded from honourable offices, but might not testify against those born legitimate". "But", he said, writing in the early part of the seventeenth century, "to-day these distinctions are mostly obsolete and the principal difference consists in taking or leaving an inheritance": Jurisprudence of Holland, translation by Professor Lee, p. 55. English law never imposed any similar disabilities. Blackstone said that "really any other distinction, but that of not inheriting, which civil policy renders necessary, would, with regard to the innocent offspring of his parents' crimes, be odious, unjust and cruel to the last degree". Perhaps he underrated the element of disgrace and the humiliation that has often been the lot of the bastard. This element has varied in different periods and among different classes. At no time was an illegitimate child necessarily an outcast. All offices and dignities, except some in the Church, were and are open to him. If the child of a person of rank, he might be acknowledged, provided for, given a surname, perhaps with the prefix "fitz", and bear the family arms charged with a baton sinister or a border wavy. If a child of more humble parents his position has usually depended in the past, as it does to-day, on how far he is taken into the family. If his parents lived together and were married after his birth - and it is in that case that we are concerned with him - then, although the common law did not count him legitimate, his position in the family and in social estimation might not seem to differ from that of a child born legitimate, as perhaps his younger brothers and sisters were. Nevertheless it would be a mistake to depreciate the social consequences of illegitimate birth.

It was argued that legitimation could be considered as a process by which a social stigma is removed, apart altogether from the effecting of any change in proprietary rights and capacities. It was said that the proprietary consequences, rights of inheritance and so forth, are incidents that the law attaches to the status of legitimate child, not the status itself. The proposition requires some analysis both to be sure of what was meant and to appreciate how it was sought to apply it. It is true that the legal consequences of legitimate birth have varied greatly from time to time and from one system of law to another. Some are more or less universally regarded as of the essence of family law. Such are the rights of young children to be cared for and maintained by their parents according to their needs and their parents' means. The parental duty is enforced in different ways in different systems, but is generally recognized. Other matters, such as rights of inheritance, the share if any that a child must get in his father's or mother's estate, vary from system to system and have varied from time to time. Although when Blackstone wrote not inheriting was the only important legal incapacity of a bastard, earlier writers never spoke of legitimacy as meaning no more than a capacity to inherit. Bracton did not. In a passage to which I refer later he spoke of persons as "legitimate and capable of inheriting". And Fortescue said that the law of England not only judges the offspring of illicit intercourse illegitimate, but also forbids them to succeed to the patrimony, prolem nedum iudicat non esse legittimam sed et succedere prohibet in patrimonio: Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Angliae c. xxxix. It thus was, and is, quite appropriate to regard incapacity to inherit as a consequence of bastardy, not of its essence. Its essence is birth out of wedlock. But its effective meaning as a legal status is in the legal disabilities that attach to that condition. Similarly the essence of legitimacy is birth in wedlock. To that condition rights, claims, immunities and duties attach by law, so that legitimacy too is a legal status. But how can it be said that making a bastard legitimate does anything else in law than make him the recipient of, entitled to and bound by, the rights, claims, immunities and duties that, at the time and from time to time, are given by law to a legitimate child and denied by law to an illegitimate child? So far as those are matters that law can control or enforce, they are all, broadly, of a proprietary or pecuniary character, whether they relate to succession or to support. Legitimacy is not a style or dignity, or right of precedence. Reference was made to the cases on private international law where legitimacy is described as a personal status. Certainly it is so, and whether it exists or not is to be determined by domiciliary law. But its meaning for local law is in the legal rights that attach to it. I do not understand how either legitimacy or bastardy can be said to be a legal status apart from legal consequences. Invidious social attitudes do not make up a legal status, and they cannot be controlled by law. To speak of legitimation as effecting something other than a change in legal status assumes, so it seems to me, that law can accomplish something that in reality is beyond it. What would it mean to say that an illegitimate child had been legitimated unless he got all the legal rights of a legitimate child? It would mean, I suppose, that he must not be called a bastard or said to be illegitimate, that some other words must be used to describe the facts of his birth. And, even assuming that a law for the legitimation of an illegitimate child can be regarded as affecting a personal condition without regard to its legal consequences, I do not see that it is thereby made a law with respect to marriage.

Section 89 of the Commonwealth Act provides that a child whose parents were not married to each other at the time of his birth but who have subsequently married is, by virtue of the marriage, for all purposes - which I take it means, for all purposes of law - the legitimate child of his parents as from his birth. The section is an independent provision in the Act. It gains nothing from its context. The question whether it is a law with respect to marriage is, therefore, best tested by ignoring the fact that it is a Marriage Act and assuming that the Commonwealth, without having enacted anything about marriage, had simply passed an Act in the terms of s. 89 and had called it a Legitimation Act, as its English prototype of 1926 is called. Would such an Act be a law with respect to marriage? And, if so, why?

Every law for legitimation cannot, in my opinion, be a law with respect to marriage. Legitimation can be effected in various ways. These do not all have a place in English law, although English law recognizes their efficacy in other systems. For example, in some of the United States of America formal recognition by a child's father, without the parents ever being married at all, suffices. In some of the Australian States legal adoption may result in legitimation. Furthermore a bastard could always be legitimated by Act of Parliament, although there do not seem to be any modern instances of this except some mentioned in Kent's Commentaries as having occurred in the United States. I do not think, however, that the Commonwealth Parliament could provide for legitimation by recognition or adoption or simply enact that A, a bastard, should be the legitimate son of B. Or, to take a fanciful illustration - suppose that the Commonwealth Parliament decided that it would follow the example of Roman law by which a child might be legitimated by being made a decurio, that is a member of a curia or local administrative council, and that it thereupon enacted that any one who was illegitimate would be legitimated by becoming a lighthouse keeper or a postman. Such an enactment would not, in my opinion, be a law with respect to marriage. And I think it unlikely that it would be a law with respect to lighthouses or postal services. It would be a law with respect to bastardy and legitimation, and beyond Commonwealth power.

On the other hand, if an Act that authorized or validated some particular union as a lawful marriage went on to declare that issue born or to be born thereof were legitimate, I have no doubt it would be a law with respect to marriage. That, I take it, is what the learned authors of Quick and Garran on The Constitution probably had in mind when they referred to laws on the subject of marriage embracing "the consequences of the relation including the status of the married parties, their mutual rights and obligations, the legitimacy of children and their civil rights". An example of a law of that sort is the statute of 1552, 5 & 6 Ed. VI, c. 12, concerning the marriages of clergy of the Church of England. It declared their marriages lawful and provided that children "born in any such matrimony shall be deemed, judged, reputed and taken to all intents, constructions and purposes to be born in lawful matrimony, and to be legitimate and inheritable to lands, tenements and hereditaments as any other children born in lawful matrimony between any of the King's lay subjects be inheritable". It also, it may be mentioned, provided for dower and curtesy, other ordinary consequences of lawful matrimony. Whether there have been any more recent examples of statutes in that form I do not know. Generally speaking it has been thought enough in Acts passed to remove doubts about the validity of marriages simply to declare them fully valid, either absolutely or, as in the Greek Marriages Act, 1884 and others, with certain savings. There is a list of fifty-three such Acts in the report of counsel's argument in Starkowski v. Attorney-General [1] . I have not examined them all. But such as I have contain no express declaration of the legitimacy of children. That would follow in the case of children in fact born of a marriage thus declared valid. The same method was adopted in the Australian Colonies in legislation permitting marriages with a deceased wife's sister. But if, instead of leaving it as an inference of law, a Commonwealth Act validating a marriage expressly declared the issue to be legitimate, it would be a valid, if pleonastic, provision. But an Act which said the opposite, namely that children born to a husband and wife in lawful matrimony were bastards, would be self-contradictory and meaningless. To speak of it as a law with respect to marriage would, I consider, be a contradiction in terms. I am unable to accept the hypothesis of such a law as the foundation of an argument. And I am unable to accept the argument that a law by which marriage legitimates an earlier-born child is juristically equivalent to the fundamental principle that it is the marriage of spouses that makes their after-born children legitimate. In the one case it said marriage precedes the birth and operates prospectively, in the other it follows it and operates retrospectively. Therefore, so the argument ran, a pronouncement that the child is legitimate is in each case a law with respect to marriage. That is a view that might perhaps be logically open if the Commonwealth Parliament were instituting marriage for the first time for Australians as, according to legend, Cecrops did for Attica. But it is not. Legitimacy by birth and legitimation are not the same thing.

That a child born in lawful wedlock is legitimate is not a consequence that extrinsic law has given to marriage and which it could withdraw or withhold. It is of the essence of the institution of marriage. It is inherent, not attributed. Legitimation, on the other hand, is the artificial giving to a person born illegitimate of the legal status that he would have had had he been born in wedlock. Far from being immanent in matrimony, as the legitimacy of offspring is, legitimation by subsequent marriage is a deliberate invention of law, just as are other methods of legitimation. It was introduced into Roman law by express enactment, extended by later enactments and taken into canon law by papal mandate.

To sum up thus far: A law for the legitimation of bastards is not, as such, a law with respect to marriage. And not every law that gives entry into marriage a legal consequence is a law with respect to marriage.

But s. 89 does both of those things. It provides for legitimation by marriage; and that, it was argued, suffices to bring it within the power. And my brother Kitto has suggested in his judgment - reading which has been most helpful to me, although I am unable to accept all his conclusions - that anyone well acquainted with the civil law would have no difficulty in seeing it as a law about marriage. It may be so - I am not a canonist or civilian - but, with respect, I doubt it. I appreciate, however, that legitimation by subsequent matrimony is a doctrine long known in the canon law, interwoven in the civil law and a part of the law of all countries governed by the civil law. To it, and then to its relation to the English law of marriage, I therefore now turn.

The general idea of legitimation originated in later Roman law after the Empire had become Christian. Several methods of legitimation were then recognized by law. The effect of each was to bring the legitimated offspring within patria potestas, thus bringing them into the family, making them filii familias as if they had been born ex justis nuptiis. They could succeed to their father's property, but this, it seems, was always a secondary consideration to bringing them into patria potestas: see Professor Jolowicz, Roman Foundations of Modern Law, p. 197. Because legitimation involved subjection to patria potestas, an illegitimate child could not be legitimated against his will.

It was Constantine who, early in the fourth century, first provided for legitimation by subsequent marriage. Originally this was confined to the offspring of concubinage and did not extend to bastards generally. Concubinage was a semimatrimonium, recognized by social custom and not regarded with censure. It was a monogamous relationship. A man might not have a wife and a concubine or two concubines. The position of the concubine was below that of a matron, but it was not dishonourable. She shared her husband's bed and board, but did not enjoy his honours. Pothier was later to speak, somewhat inaccurately perhaps, of the morganatic marriages of Germanic custom as a survival of the Roman practice of concubinage. Constantine's law was re-enacted by Zeno and extended by others. Justinian gave it a general application. It was no longer confined to marriages with concubines. The Church took over this doctrine. And, by the combined effect of canon law and civil law, it has continued, in slightly differing forms, to have a place in most Continental systems of law. Any child born out of wedlock is made legitimate by his parents marrying, provided that no impediment existed to their marriage when the child was conceived or born. Which was the critical time is a question on which jurists differed.

The canonical doctrine appeared in the Decretals (c. 6, X, 4, 17) in the form in which it was stated by Pope Alexander III: Tanta est vis matrimonii ut qui antea sunt geniti post contractum matrimonium legitimi habeantur. One theoretical basis for this, put forward later, was that notionally the marriage of the parents had taken place before the children were born. In some cases, of course, there might have been an informal marriage, sponsalia de praesenti or sponsalia de futuro, and the later ceremony a solemnization of it. But in most cases ante-dating the marriage was merely a fiction of law. In that form the civil law accepted the rule. Pothier in his Traité du Contrat de Mariage v. ii, 1, 1, said that the doctrine was said to be explained by an assumption that the intercourse by which the children were conceived occurred when the parents were intending to be married: that it was a kind of anticipation of the marriage that the parties then proposed to contract and which they had since effectively contracted. The children should therefore be regarded " comme des fruits anticipés de ce mariage, et comme s'ils en étoient nés ". Consistently with this view, the legitimated children were deemed to have been born legitimate; and not only were living children legitimated, but also any who had died, so that their issue got rights of succession through them. The fiction also fitted neatly with the requirement that the parents must have been capable of marrying when their children were begotten or born. Only naturales, not spurii, could be legitimated. The offspring of an adulterous intercourse could not be legitimated, neither could those who were called incestuous because their parents were not validly married, being within the canonical degrees so extensively elaborated by the mediaeval Church.

In modern times, in countries where legitimation by subsequent matrimony prevails by virtue of their inheritance of the civil law, the tendency has been to discard the fiction and to treat the principle simply as a conclusion of law based on justice and morality. This can be seen in the later, as compared with earlier, editions of Erskine's Institutes of the Law of Scotland, and see Green, Encyclopaedia of Scots Law, 2nd ed. vii, pp. 454, 455 and Kerr v. Martin [1] , where there is an array of the Continental authorities on the whole subject. In common law countries into which legitimation by subsequent matrimony has been introduced by statute there has been no need to involve it with a fiction. However, in some cases - s. 89 is one - legitimation has been expressly given a retrospective effect: as in the canon law, the legitimated child is made legitimate as from birth.

One other aspect should be mentioned. The children having been born out of wedlock, the presumption as to paternity that results from birth in wedlock is missing. Therefore, if a child is to be legitimated by marriage, it must be established in some way that the persons marrying are, in fact, the parents. This led to a question among civilians whether legitimation occurs simply by force of the marriage, or whether some contemporaneous formality establishing filiation and the assent of the spouses to the legitimation is necessary. There was at one period a widespread custom that children to be legitimated should attend the marriage ceremony under a cloak. Legitimated children were thus often called "mantle children". Pothier was at pains to show, in the passage to which Kitto J. has drawn attention, that it was not necessary by French law in his day that the parents should consent to the legitimation of their children. It was not within their power, he said, to deprive them of the right that the law gave. Legitimation occurred by the unaided force and efficacy of the marriage the parents contracted. He went on to say that still less was it necessary to have the children at the marriage ceremony under a cloak. That was only one manner by which the parents could recognize them as their children: Pothier, op. cit. V, 1, 2, 4.

Modern systems differ in their requirements. In France to-day the law is no longer as Pothier stated it; for by the Civil Code, Article 331, a formal legal recognition of the children by the parents is required, either before or at the marriage ceremony. In some of the United States of America, some form of ancillary registration is a condition of legitimation by subsequent marriage. And in Australia registration has been required by some of the State statutes. On the other hand, under the German Code of 1896, and in some other systems, a subsequent marriage automatically effects legitimation. Paternity is then simply a basic fact. If questioned, it must be independently established. The provision with which we are concerned, s. 89, is of that kind: the child is, "by virtue of the marriage, for all purposes the legitimate child of his parents".

Turning now to the influence that the canon law doctrine has had in the law of England, and especially in the English law of marriage - It is often said that legitimation by subsequent matrimony had no place in the law of England until 1926, having been rejected, it is said, by the barons at Merton in 1236. But this is a misleading simplification. Long before the events at Merton occurred, Glanvil had noted that according to canon and Roman law a child born before marriage was made a legitimate heir by marriage; but that nevertheless by the ius et consuetudo regni he was not permitted to inherit a hereditament, not could he recover a hereditament by the ius regni: Tamen secundum ius et consuetudinem regni nullo modo tanquam heres in hereditate sustinetur vel hereditatem de iure regni petere potest (Glanvil, VII, 15). That is an exact statement. The law of the king's court was the ius et consuetudo regni. The court was chiefly concerned with the feudal land law, with questions of seisin and tenure and heirship. Marriage, on the other hand, was a matter for the ecclesiastical courts; and so was legitimacy if questioned, for it depended on the existence or the validity of a marriage. Therefore, when, in an action before the king's judges for recovery of land, it was alleged that the demandant or tenant was a bastard, because his parents had never been married or because their marriage was invalid, the king's court referred the issue of bastardy to the ecclesiastical court for the bishop's certificate. And when the allegation was that the parents had not been married until after the birth of the party, the temporal courts wished to refer it in that form - was the party born before marriage? This was a special plea of bastardy, called a plea of "special bastardy". At Merton the prelates objected to answering a question in that form. They wished to certify simply either legitimus or non legitimus according to the canon law. The barons were adamant. On a question of feudal law the lex terrae should prevail. Land should descend only to a tenant's right heir. How could one be sure of the paternity of a child not born in wedlock? Nolumus leges Angliae mutare they replied. The somewhat complicated details of all this may be read in Rolle's Abridgment i, 361-362; Reeves, History of English Law, i, 463-468; Maitland, Canon Law in England, 53-56, and the Selden Society's edition of Y.B. 6 & 7 Ed. II, pp. xii-xiv, 95-110. The upshot was that pleas of "special bastardy" came to be tried by the country, at all events when the question arose on a possessory writ. But an issue of "general bastardy" might be referred to the ecclesiastical courts, as it had been before the Council met at Merton. Sharshulle J. in Y.B. 2 Ed. III (1337), Rolls Series p. 232, said: "There is no inconvenience since the law of Holy Church and the law of the land (la ley de la terre) differ; and he who well understands the statute of Merton will know how to end the debate quickly enough". And in the same case Stonore J. said to the demandant: "Although it be certified that you are a mulier, (i.e. legitimate) yet it is not thereby proved that you are his next heir". That summed up the matter.

The ecclesiastical courts in England had not relinquished their doctrine of legitimation by subsequent matrimony. They maintained and continued to apply it within their jurisdiction. The result was that in matters concerning real property, the royal court's view of legitimacy prevailed, except in the peculiar case of the bastard eigne and the mulier puisne. But for entry into Holy Orders and some other matters, including it seems the administration of the goods of intestates, the Church still had its way and decided legitimacy according to its rules: Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, vol. ii, 378n, and see Co. Litt. 243a-245a. So that for a time legitimation by subsequent matrimony was still a part of English law. But events in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth century rapidly carried the matter a stage further. The ius et consuetudo regni, the law of the king's court, had by then become the common law of England. Fortescue's argumentative defence of its rules, written about 1470, may have been provoked by some proposal to introduce canon and civil law doctrine: see Barrington on the Statutes (1796) p. 48. By the time of the Reformation, or shortly afterwards, the common law rule had quite supplanted the canon and civil law doctrine of legitimation in relation to succession to personalty. That came to be regulated by statutes. And references in statutes to next of kin, or to children, were read as meaning those who were legitimate according to the common law. To them, and not to bastards, grants of administration might be made. To them and not to bastards the goods of an intestate should go. The land law had become the law of the land. The lex terrae was the lex Angliae.

The law of marriage, however, remained the concern of the ecclesiastical courts until the nineteenth century. The common law courts were not often directly concerned with it. How far sentences of the ecclesiastical courts created estoppels in temporal courts was never an easy subject: See the Duchess of Kingston's Case [1] , especially the opinion given by De Grey C.J. [2] ; and the notes to Kenn's Case [3] and to Bunting v. Lepingwell [4] . From various causes, partly procedural, the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts in cases of general bastardy declined. By 1617 it had been held by the Common Pleas that when in an action on the case for calling a man a bastard the defendant justified that he was a bastard, this should be tried by a jury and not by the ordinary: Hobart , p. 179. The old learning on these topics is summarized in Bacon's Abridgment under "Bastardy" and in Comyn's Digest under that title and under "Certificate". It is not necessary to go into it here. Ultimately bastardy was determined by the common law for all purposes; and subsequent marriage, if it had any bearing, affected only social estimation, not legal recognition.

1. (1776) 20 St. Tr. 355. 2. (1776) 20 St. Tr., at pp. 538-546. 3. (1606) 7 Co. 42 [77 E.R. 474]. 4. (1585) 4 Co. 355 [76 E.R. 950].

From this survey of the development of the law either of two conclusions, relevant to the present question, might perhaps be drawn. One is that the statutory introduction of the principle of legitimation by subsequent marriage is but a restitution to the law of marriage of a part that had become lost to it; the statutory restoration of which is, therefore, a law with respect to marriage. But that would be simply to resort to antiquarian learning. We are concerned with the law of to-day, not with the law of the Middle Ages. The only reason for going back into the past is to come forward to the present, to help us to see more clearly the shape of the law of to-day by seeing how it took shape. The other view, and the one that I therefore think the correct one, is that by the course of legal development bastardy and marriage have become separate topics of law. A relationship that was the product of procedural law and the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts has long ceased to exist. Legitimation and marriage are thus, I consider, different subjects for legislation to-day. I do not for a moment dispute that if a mediaeval canon lawyer had been asked whether the Church's doctrine of legitimation by subsequent matrimony was a law with respect to marriage he would have readily answered that it was. He would, I imagine, have at once assigned it to the fourth of the five divisions of canon law referred to in the mnemonic hexameter iudex, iudicium, clerus, connubia, crimen. In canonical jurisprudence the purpose of the doctrine was to encourage the parents to enter into matrimony for their own spiritual welfare. Its method was to deem a marriage to have taken place before the birth of the legitimated child. Its essential condition was the capacity of the parents to have married at that date. None of these considerations applies to the provisions in the Commonwealth Act. Its concern is the temporal welfare of the children, not the spiritual welfare of their parents. And in any event we are not to decide this question by reference to canonical jurisprudence.

The viewpoint of the civilians seems somewhat more relevant. Some writers, influenced perhaps by the classical idea of the law of persons, dealt with the law of legitimacy and illegitimacy by reference to status. Grotius, for example, writing of Roman-Dutch law, dealt with marriage and with legitimate and illegitimate issue as separate topics and in separate chapters under the general heading "The Legal Conditions of Men", that is to say the law of status. A somewhat similar arrangement has been followed by a modern writer, Professor Lee, in his Introduction to Roman-Dutch Law. Pothier in his work on the Contract of Marriage, to which I referred earlier, considered legitimation by subsequent marriage among the civil effects of marriage, of which he listed a great many, both personal and proprietary. However, the differing ways in which institutional writers in the past have arranged their material do not mean much for present purposes. The French and German Civil Codes are more illuminating, for they embody systematic modern classifications of legal topics and deal with marriage as a wholly civil institution. Having read the relevant parts of them, it seems to me unlikely that either a French or German lawyer would readily regard legitimation by marriage as a part of marriage law. The former would, I imagine, regard both topics as embraced separately by the law of persons. The latter would perhaps say that they are separate divisions of family law. However that may be, we must interpret the Australian Constitution having regard to the categories and classifications of English law.

In my opinion, the private international law cases to which we were referred, In re Goodman's Trusts [1] ; In re Luck's Settlement Trusts [2] and In re Bischoffsheim [3] , are entirely consonant with the view that s. 89 is not a law with respect to marriage. In those cases the question whether or not a person was legitimate arose in connexion with claims to property. They establish that that question is one of status, and that status depends upon domicile, and that if a person is legitimate by the law of his domicile English law will recognize that status however created, whether by legitimation brought about by subsequent marriage or by recognition, or by birth. The validity by English law of the act or event, marriage or whatever it be, creating the status is irrelevant. The only question is what is the status by the law of the domicile. The troublesome question of what is the relevant domiciliary law need not detain us. I do not read the proceedings in Birtwhistle v. Vardill [4] , on either of the occasions on which it was before the House of Lords as containing anything decisive for present purposes. The decision ultimately arrived at, fifteen years after the case began, after two hearings in the House of Lords, was that which had been succinctly stated by Abbott C.J. when the case was before the King's Bench in 1826 [5] : "The simple question is who is the heir to lands in England. The rule as to the law of the domicile has never been extended to real property" [6] . And as Holroyd J. put it, and this accords with the view later taken by Westlake and others: "I take it that legitimacy alone is not sufficient to make a person inherit socage lands, it must be legitimacy sub modo: the heir must be a child born after marriage" [7] . Throughout the proceedings the question, it seems to me, was one of legitimacy, of status, of heirship, not of marriage. The catch words - Questio Status. Legitimacy - which the reporters placed beside the headnote in Birtwhistle v. Vardill [1] correctly state the subject matter of the case. The marriage and its effect in Scots law were not in dispute. The case in one aspect certainly involved the law of marriage, but only, it seems to me, because of the argument, warmly espoused by Lord Brougham, that the canon law theory or fiction, then prevailing in the law of Scotland, whereby the subsequent marriage was deemed to be ante-dated should in the case of a Scottish marriage be, as it were, received and recognized in England. This view was not accepted.

1. (1881) 17 Ch. D. 266. 2. [1940] 1 Ch. 864. 3. [1948] 1 Ch. 79. 4. (1835) 2 Cl. & F. 571 [6 E.R. 1270]; (1840) 7 Cl. & F. 895 [7 E.R. 1308]. 5. (1826) 5 B. & C. 438 [108 E.R. 163]. 6. (1826) 5 B. & C., at p. 451 [108 E.R., at p. 168]. 7. (1826) 5 B. & C., at p. 454 [108 E.R., at p. 169]. 8. (1835) 2 Cl. & F. 571 [6 E.R. 1270].

Before leaving s. 89 I should refer to the suggestion, or concession, by counsel for the Commonwealth that a State might by statute curtail the effect of the Commonwealth Act. I do not myself see how this could be. I fully share the doubts that the Chief Justice has expressed. A State statute could, no doubt, give whatever meaning the legislature liked to any word appearing in it. But I cannot accept the proposition that was put forward as consistent with s. 109 of the Constitution. The status of legitimacy created by legitimation pursuant to s. 89 must, if the Commonwealth law be valid, apply throughout Australia and for all Australians. I do not think that its ordinary legal meaning can be impaired by any State. The States are, for many purposes of private international law, separate countries in relation to one another. But the relation of a State to the Commonwealth is an entirely different matter. It is governed by the Constitution.

I go now to another question altogether, the validity of s. 91. This introduces into Australia the doctrine of putative marriage. At first sight, I was inclined to think this enactment also to be beyond the constitutional power over marriage, because its emphasis seemed to be on the legitimacy of children rather than on the character of the union of their parents. But, on consideration, I have come to the conclusion that it is well within power.

The doctrine of putative marriage has been long known to the civil law. And I think that in civil law countries it would be generally regarded as part of the law of marriage. Its history, theory and substance are discussed in two learned and interesting articles by Doctor Cohn, The Nullity of Marriage in the Law Quarterly Review (1948) vol. 64, 324 and 533. References to its place in modern Continental systems may be found in Burge's Colonial and Foreign Law, New edition (1910), iii, pp. 20, 83, 113, 114, 235-237 et passim. It is perhaps worth noticing that they are in the volume on marriage, and that legitimacy and legitimation are dealt with in another volume.

The origin of the doctrine of putative marriage seems to have been in the canonical concept of good faith. Many of the rules of the canon law existed pro salute animae. The illegitimacy of children was a consequence of the guilt of their parents. If in the eyes of the Church they were not guilty, having had no guilty knowledge or intent but acting in good faith, then the consequence of guilt should not follow.

The doctrine was known to Bracton and treated by him as part of English law. In a passage which he took from the work of the canonist Tancred he said, "If a woman in good faith marries a man who is already married, believing him to be unmarried, and has children by him, such children will be adjudged legitimate and capable of inheriting": as quoted by Pollock and Maitland, op. cit. ii, 376. He went on to say that the principle only applied when the invalid marriage was contracted in facie ecclesiae. A clandestine marriage would not suffice. Those who chose to be married clandestinely could not rely upon good faith. Fleta repeated Bracton. But after a time the principle was lost to English law.

In an appeal from Quebec - where the Civil Code states the principle in the same words as do Articles 201 and 202 in the Title Du Mariage in the French Civil Code - Lord Dunedin, delivering the judgment of the Privy Council, said: "The doctrine of putative marriage was well known to the canon law, and has been adopted by many systems founded on the canon law. In England the canon law on this subject has been abandoned. In Scotland it is in viridi observantia ": Berthiaume v. Dastous [1] . Why the doctrine came to be abandoned in England is a matter on which there is some difference of opinion. However it does not affect the question for us.

Section 91 is in marked contrast with s. 89. It does not, as s. 89 does, deal with legitimation. It provides that the offspring of a union, which at relevant times was believed by at least one of the parties to be a valid marriage, are legitimate. That is to say, the union has one of the essential qualities of lawful wedlock, that the children of it are born legitimate. The law calls it a void marriage it is true; but the terminology and concepts of law at this point - void, voidable, a nullity - have always contained difficulties. If the marriage be null, how can it have any of the effects of a valid marriage? Jurists have debated this for centuries. Good faith supplies the defect, was one answer. For our purpose the important fact is that the provision in question, s. 91, is not dealing with the status of a child who is the product of some merely casual and promiscuous intercourse. It is dealing with the offspring of a union that it calls a marriage, albeit a void marriage, one which the parties entered into as a marriage. Lord Chelmsford in Shaw v. Gould [1] quoted the evidence of Scottish advocates as to the nature of a putative marriage as follows: "that is a marriage regular and solemn in point of form, but null in law, because of the existence of an impediment such as the prior existing marriage of one of the parties, both or either of the parties being ignorant of the existence of the prior marriage" [2] . That is what s. 91 is dealing with. Just as the test of legitimacy is birth in marriage, so one of the tests of whether a union is a marriage is, as Lord Cottenham said in the passage I referred to earlier, whether or not the children born of it are legitimate. I appreciate that the matter can be looked at in another way. It can be said, as Lord Phillimore once said, that "it is a possible jural conception that a child may be legitimate though its parents were not and could not be lawfully married. This principle was admitted by the canon law which governed western continental Europe till about a century ago": Khoo Hooi Leong v. Khoo Hean Kwee [3] . But it seems to me that the law here in question is one with respect to marriage simply because it attributes one of the essential characteristics of marriage to a union that it recognizes as existing or as having existed. The Act also, it may be noted, treats this union as a marriage for the purpose of the doctrine of s. 89 of legitimation by marriage. This too accords with modern doctrine in some civil law countries. The motive and purpose of s. 91 may be to benefit the children. But its method is to do so by reference to the minds of the parents as determining whether or not their union was at the relevant time, in the well-known phrase, a "putative marriage".

1. (1868) L.R. 3 H. L. 55. 2. (1868) L.R. 3 H.L., at p. 79. 3. [1926] A.C. 529, at p. 543.

Section 92 providing for declarations of legitimacy is an important provision. But for the reasons referred to in the judgment of the Chief Justice and of Kitto J. it seems to me to extend to cases that are outside the constitutional power, unless its application be in some way restricted by the context, or it can be read in a limited sense. In terms it would authorize a State court to declare a person legitimate or legitimated for the purposes of local law when that status depended upon the law of another country. However convenient such a jurisdiction might be, it seems to me that the Commonwealth has no power to authorize the making of a declaration that a person is legitimate if his legitimation depended in no way on marriage but on, say, adoption or recognition by the law of a State of the United States or upon a rescriptum principis as in Malta (see Gera v. Ciantar [1] ). As this matter was not argued, I say no more than that I agree that we should avoid making any pronouncement about this section.

As to s. 94, which makes bigamy an offence, this, I think, is a law with respect to marriage. In a Commonwealth statute such a provision may, as a result of the Statute of Westminster, have a wider operation than State law can have. I do not think we need regard the existence of the crime of bigamy as making marriage monogamous. Monogamy is an essential of the Christian form of marriage. Whether or not it would be within the power of the Parliament to legislate for other forms of marriage, clearly what it has legislated for is Christian marriage. Moreover the Matrimonial Causes Act 1959, Cth expressly provides that a purported marriage is void if either of the parties is at the time married to another person. But whatever the present day reasons, or the seventeenth century reasons, for making bigamy a statutory offence, it is an offence that in practice is bound up with the law of marriage and divorce. It is by its very terms concerned with persons who, being married, go through the forms and ceremonies of marriage - that is to say persons whom Commonwealth law recognizes as married who go through forms and ceremonies that are now prescribed by Commonwealth law.

In the final result I consider that s. 89 is invalid, s. 91 is valid, s. 94 is valid; and that s. 92 is of doubtful validity. It is not necessary to say how in those circumstances the demurrer should be dealt with, as the majority of the Court are of a different opinion.

The Attorney-General for the State of Victoria seeks a declaration that Pt VI and s. 94 of the Commonwealth Marriage Act (No. 12 of 1961) are invalid as being outside the legislative powers of the Commonwealth Parliament. The defendant Commonwealth has demurred on the ground that the provisions in question are within the power of the Commonwealth Parliament under s. 51 (xxi.) of the Constitution to make laws with respect to marriage. The Marriage Act consists of nine Parts. Part I contains a number of definitions and some miscellaneous provisions to which reference need not be made. Part II is headed "Marriageable Age and Marriage of Minors" and deals with these subjects. Part III deals with prohibited degrees of consanguinity and affinity. Part IV contains provisions regulating the solemnization of marriages including such matters as the persons who may solemnize marriages and the conditions to be fulfilled in connexion with the marriage ceremony and Pt V makes various provisions relating to the solemnizing of marriages overseas. Part VI, which is the subject of attack, is headed "Legitimation" and the three relevant provisions in it are ss. 89, 90 and 91. Section 89 (1) provides that a child whose parents were not married to each other at the time of the child's birth but have subsequently married each other is, for all purposes, the legitimate child of the parents, and by sub-s. (2) this provision is to apply whether or not there was a legal impediment to the marriage of the parents at the time of the child's birth. Section 90 provides, in effect, that where the parents of a child born illegitimate have married each other outside Australia, the father not being domiciled in Australia at the time of the marriage, and by the law of the place where the father was domiciled at the time of marriage the marriage legitimated the child, the child is, for all purposes, the legitimate child of his parents whether or not the law of the father's domicile at the time of the birth of the child permitted or recognized legitimation by subsequent marriage. Section 91 legitimates the child of a void marriage if at the time of the intercourse that resulted in the birth of the child or the time when the ceremony of marriage took place, whichever was the later, either party to the marriage believed on reasonable grounds that it was valid. Section 94 of the Act which is in Part VII headed "Offences" makes it an offence for a person who is married to go through the form or ceremony of marriage with any person. In other words it makes bigamy a crime under Commonwealth law. I feel no difficulty at all about the validity of s. 94. It seems to me that a law forbidding a person who is married to go through a second ceremony of marriage with a person who is not his or her spouse and imposing a penalty in case of breach is a law "with respect to marriage".

The provisions of Pt VI, however, present more difficulty. The fundamental objection to their validity is based upon the fact that the status of illegitimacy and the results that flow from it relate to the law of property and inheritance. Illegitimacy carries with it a social stigma, but in law the word refers to the status of a person who, because not born in lawful wedlock, cannot be presumed to be the lawful issue of those who are in fact his parents and who therefore has none of the rights of inheritance which belong to a person whose status is one of legitimacy. Accordingly, it is said, Pt VI is not a law with respect to marriage but a law with respect to property and inheritance rights. I agree that it is a law answering this last description but it does not follow that it is not also a law with respect to marriage. If the Act had contained a provision that all children born in lawful wedlock should be presumed to be legitimate, instead of leaving that presumption to be supplied by the common law, I would have thought it impossible to say that such a law was not within power. If so, it would seem to follow that a Commonwealth law declaring that all children born of a marriage entered into in accordance with the provisions of the Commonwealth Marriage Act should be illegitimate would be equally valid or, if the power to make such a law resides in the Legislature of a State, that a State law to that effect would be within its competence. No one supposes that any legislature would enact such a law. The mind rebels against the very idea but the cause of its rebellion surely is that there is such a close association in the minds of civilized people between the concepts of marriage and the legitimacy of children born of marriage and this tends, I think, to support the view that a power to make laws with respect to marriage and with respect to matters incidental to the execution of that power carries with it a power to legislate as to the status of children born to those who marry or, perhaps, to those who go through the ceremony of marriage in the belief in the minds of one or both of the participants that a valid marriage has been contracted. There can, in my opinion, be no doubt that under the marriage power the Commonwealth Parliament may make laws regulating the mutual rights and obligations of those who marry and I can see no reason why the power should not be wide enough to enable the relationship between those who marry and their children to be defined and regulated whether those children be born before or after marriage. Section 89 takes marriage as its starting point and lays down what its effect shall be on the status and relationship of a child born before marriage to those who are in fact its parents. The section is, in my opinion, within the law-making powers of the Commonwealth Parliament. This was the view expressed in Quick and Garran on The Australian Constitution. Speaking of s. 51 (xxi.) the learned authors said (at p. 608): "Laws relating to this subject will therefore embrace (1) the establishment of the relation, including preliminary conditions, contractual capacity, banns, license, consent of parents or guardians, solemnization, evidence, and rules in restraint, (2) the consequences of the relation, including the status of the married parties, their mutual rights and obligations, the legitimacy of children and their civil rights." From what I have said it follows that s. 90 is equally within power.

Section 91 presents a somewhat more difficult problem. It takes as its starting point not a valid marriage but a marriage which is void and makes the legitimation of a child born to the parties to that void marriage depend upon the belief on reasonable grounds of one or both of them that the marriage was valid. But there is, I think, a sufficient nexus between such a provision and the power to legislate with respect to marriage. There can be no doubt that it is within the competence of the Commonwealth Parliament to declare what shall or shall not constitute a valid marriage and I can see no good reason why, if it can declare to be invalid that which on its face appears to be a valid marriage, it cannot limit the consequences of that invalidity upon the status of children born to the parties to the invalid marriage.

Accordingly I am of opinion that the demurrer should be upheld.