The High Court of Australia ruled that the country’s deputy Prime Minister and four senators were ineligible to sit in Parliament as “subjects or citizen of a foreign power”. Two other Australian senators who had inherited foreign citizenship (Italian and British) were not dual citizens, according to the constitutional definition.

The High Court accepted that a separate section of the Constitution expressly permits Australian citizens with an inherited dual citizenship to become members of parliament and that it was not intended to prevent them from participating in Australia’s system of representative government. In such a case, the person is required to take all the actions (within their power) to renounce his or her foreign citizenship.

Read the Court’s decision here.

Analyses and comments here and here, as well as in our previous blog posts by Graeme Orr and Helen Irving and Elisa Arcioni.