(per Knox CJ, Isaacs, Rich & Starke JJ; Higgins J concurring separately; Gavan Duffy J dissenting) Amalgamated Society of Engineers v Adelaide Steamship Co Ltd, commonly known as the Engineers case,[1] was a landmark decision by the High Court of Australia on 31 August 1920.

The question was whether a Commonwealth law made under the "conciliation and arbitration" power regarding industrial disputes, section 51(xxxv), could authorise the making of an award binding the three employers.

[14] As Griffith CJ declared in the first case: In considering the respective powers of the Commonwealth and of the States it is essential to bear in mind that each is, within the ambit of its authority, a sovereign State, subject only to the restrictions imposed by the Imperial connection and to the provisions of the Constitution, either expressed or necessarily implied... a right of sovereignty subject to extrinsic control is a contradiction in terms.

Menzies records Starke J as describing the argument as nonsense and says I, in what I later realized to be an inspired moment, replied: 'Sir, I quite agree.'

The use of American precedent was rejected in favour of applying the settled rules of construction that gave primacy to the text of the Constitution and anchored its interpretation to its express words.

The Court considered its earlier decision in D'Emden v Pedder,[23] which had been the foundation case for the original intergovernmental immunities doctrine.

Passages of the joint majority judgment discuss the paramountcy of Commonwealth law, which foreshadow the later expansion of Constitution s109 inconsistency doctrine in Clyde Engineering Co Ltd v Cowburn:[25] The language of the D'Emden v Pedder non-interference principle lives on in the second ("rights impairment") test of inconsistency.

Latham wrote:[27] It cut off Australian constitutional law from American precedents, a copious source of thoroughly relevant learning, in favour of crabbed English rules of statutory interpretation, which are one of the sorriest features of English law, and are... particularly unsuited to the interpretation of a rigid Constitution....

The majority remarked: "American authorities... are not a secure basis on which to build fundamentally with respect to our own Constitution [but] in secondary... matters they may... afford considerable light and assistance.

This use of foreign precedents was associated with the demise of the Privy Council appeal and the Court's recognition of its responsibility to declare the law for Australia.

Sir Owen Dixon, in particular, was critical of any such overblown reading of the Engineers case in this oft-quoted passage: "The prima-facie rule is that a power to legislate with respect to a given subject enables the Parliament to make laws which, upon that subject, affect the operations of the States and their agencies.

"[29] Earlier, he had written: "We should avoid pedantic and narrow constructions in dealing with an instrument of government and I do not see why we should be fearful about making implications.

Writing in 1971, Windeyer J made the following assessment of the Engineers case:[31]The Colonies which in 1901 became States in the new Commonwealth were not before then sovereign bodies in any strict legal sense; and certainly the Constitution did not make them so.

Its nationhood was in the course of time to be consolidated in war, by economic and commercial integration, by the unifying influence of federal law, by the decline of dependence upon British naval and military power and by a recognition and acceptance of external interests and obligations.

That the Commonwealth would, as time went on, enter progressively, directly or indirectly, into fields that had formerly been occupied by the States, was from an early date seen as likely to occur.

I have never thought it right to regard the discarding of the doctrine of the implied immunity of the States and other results of the Engineers case[1] as the correction of antecedent errors or as the uprooting of heresy.

In substitution for the American idea of federalism, the Court asserted that the British system of parliamentary responsible government was especially fundamental to the system[32]The Engineers case has also had an important legacy on the High Court's use of comparative (particularly American) cases in developing federalism.