What is the importance of ‘Conditional legislation’?

It was said by O’ Connor, J., of the High Court of Australia in the case of Baxter v. Ah- Way, C.L.R. 626 at page 637:

“The aim of all legislatures is to project their minds as far as possible into the future, and to provide in terms as general as possible for all contingencies likely to arise in the application of the law.

But it is not possible to provide specifically for all cases and, therefore legislation from the very earliest times and particularly in modern times, has taken the form of conditional legislation, leaving it to some specified authority to determine:

(i) The circumstances in which the law shall be applied, or

(ii) What its operation shall be extended to, or

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(iii) The particular class of persons or goods to which it shall be applied.”

The question raised in this Australian case related to the validity of certain provisions of the Customs Act of 1901.

The Act prohibited the importation of certain goods which were specifically mentioned and then gave power to the Governor- General-in-Council to include, by proclamation, other goods also within the prohibited list.

The validity of the provision was challenged on the ground of its being an improper delegation of legislative powers. This contention was repelled and it was held that this was not a case of delegation of legislative power but of conditional legis­lation of the type which was held valid by the Privy Council in the case of Reg. v. Burah, 3 A.C.,889: 51 A. 178.

In Burah’s case, what was left to the Lieutenant-Governor was the power to apply the provisions of an Act to certain territories at his option and these territories to which the Act could be extended were also specified in the Act.

The Legislature could be said, therefore, to have applied its mind to the question of the application of the law to particular places and it was left to the executive only to determine when the laws would be made operative in those places.

In conditional legislation, law is full and complete when it leaves the legislative chamber, but the operation of law is made de­pendent upon the fulfillment of a condition, and what is delegated to an outside body is the authority to determine, by the exercise of its own judgment, whether or not the condition has been fulfilled.

It would be a case of conditional legislation where the legisla­ture empowers an authority-

(a) To extend the duration of an Act within the maximum period fixed by the legislature;

(b) To extend the existing laws to any territory;

(c) To determine the extent to which limits fixed by law should be applied;

(d) To determine the time of applying law;

(e) To bring an Ordinance into force if the State Government is satisfied about existence of an emergency and declares it to be in force in the State. The Ordinance provides for the es­tablishment of the special courts the time and within the limits considered necessary by the State Government.