Sunday, November 21, 2004  Piddington Ponders: Fourth Branch
Redux  Piddington has also been reading the latest edition of
the Australian Law Journal [ed: see post below on private law],
and he was most intrigued to find an article by his second-
favourite current Chief Justice, Jim Spigelman, entitled "The
Integrity Branch of Government". The author proposes that those
aspects of the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches of
government that are concerned with maintaining integrity should
be conceptualised as a "Fourth Branch" of government: a coherent
body of principle directed towards maintaining the integrity of
government as a whole. The author concludes:  There is, I
believe, utility in identifying the common function performed by
the institutions to which I have referred: Parliament when not
acting as a legislature; the head of state; the courts by
judicial review; Auditors-General; corruption commissions; royal
commissions etc. Whilst also performing other functions, from
legislation in the case o