The Shapeshifting Crown: Locating the State in Postcolonial New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the UK

Cambridge University Press, 1/24/2019
EAN 9781108496469, ISBN10: 1108496466

Hardcover, 288 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm
Language: English

The Crown stands at the heart of the New Zealand, British, Australian and Canadian constitutions as the ultimate source of legal authority and embodiment of state power. A familiar icon of the Westminster model of government, it is also an enigma. Even constitutional experts struggle to define its attributes and boundaries: who or what is the Crown and how is it embodied? Is it the Queen, the state, the government, a corporation sole or aggregate, a relic of feudal England, a metaphor, or a mask for the operation of executive power? How are its powers exercised? How have the Crowns of different Commonwealth countries developed? The Shapeshifting Crown combines legal and anthropological perspectives to provide novel insights into the Crown's changing nature and its multiple, ambiguous and contradictory meanings. It sheds new light onto the development of the state in postcolonial societies and constitutional monarchy as a cultural system.

1. Introduction
a shapeshifting enigma
the Crown in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom Cris Shore
Part I. The Nature and Development of the Crown
2. Genealogies of the modern Crown
from St Edward to Queen Elizabeth II David V. Williams
3. The Crown as metonym for the state? The human face of Leviathan Cris Shore
4. Indigenous peoples and the Crown
the sacred duty Sally Raudon
Part II. The Crown as an Embodied Entity
5. The rituals of Crown and state in New Zealand Jai Patel
6. Locating the Crown in Australia
the swag of Camp Gallipoli Sally Raudon
7. Localising the Crown
Royals and (re)patriation Jai Patel and Sally Raudon
Part III. The Crown and Constitutional Reform
8. The Republican move
cutting colonial ties Jai Patel
9. Constitutional reform and the politics of public engagement Cris Shore and David V. Williams
10. Crown prerogative
reining in the powers David V. Williams
11. The Queen is dead, long live the King? Sally Raudon
12. Conclusion
the future of the Crown in an age of uncertainty
sempiternal or crumbling foundation? Cris Shore, David V. Williams and Sally Raudon.