TEACHING AUSTRALIAN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW Australian Federal Constitutional Law: Commentary and Materials, by G WINTERTON, HP LEE, A GLASS and JA THOMSON (Australia: LBC

Teachers of Australian federal constitutional law now have three current casebooks available to them: the Winterton, Lee, Glass and Thomson casebook (“WLGT”), Hanks and Cass, Australian Constitutional Law: Materials and Commentary (“HC”), now in its sixth edition, and Blackshield and Williams, Australian Constitutional Law & Theory (“BW”), which has entered a second edition. The recent publication of WLGT provides an opportunity to review it in the context of these other works. WLGT consists of ten chapters, eight of which deal with topics of substantive constitutional law, framed by an introductory chapter on ‘Australian Constitutionalism’ and a concluding chapter on ‘Constitutional Interpretation’. The eight substantive chapters deal with ‘Inconsistency’, ‘Commerce and Corporations’, ‘External Affairs and Defence’, ‘Commonwealth Financial Powers’, ‘Freedom of Interstate Trade’, ‘Excise Duties’, ‘Rights and Freedoms’ and ‘Intergovernmental Immunities’. WLGT also includes a Table of Cases, a Table of Statutes, two Appendices setting out the Justices of the High Court, an extensive Bibliography and Index. Each section of the book typically consists of a brief introduction to a particular case, an extract from the case, followed by notes which raise questions for discussion. As in all academic endeavour, selection is unavoidable, and the richness of the available material in Australian constitutional law renders this necessity all the more arduous, as well as regrettable. What principles of selection guide us as teachers and scholars? While many of us will probably want to resist any categorical statement of the confines and scope of the courses that we teach, in practice at least some limits must be adopted, if only to give due regard to the dictates of professional bodies and faculty decisions regarding curriculum