Subversion Down-Under: Innovation, Ambition and the Introduction of Survival of Causes of Action Legislation in South Australia and Victoria

For much of the twentieth century, the standard characterization of the relationship between the English common law metropole and the Dominion periphery has been one of the subservience and deference of the latter to the former. While the relationship was hierarchical, such characterizations undersell the innovation and ambition that the periphery, working within imperial legal constraints, could bring to the shared common law of the empire. This article considers the introduction of survival of actions legislation in two Australian jurisdictions, South Australia and Victoria, in the early 1940s. While based on the antecedent English legislation, both jurisdictions toyed with – and in South Australia's case delivered – a much wider reform than took place in England. Rather than being mechanical recipients of law crafted in the metropole, Australian jurisdictions were well able to decide whether the English model was the best reform for their common law.