The Use of Armed Forces in Law Enforcement: Legal,Constitutional and Political Issues in Australia

In Western democracies armed forces perform a variety of internal functions. This paper examines the principles and issues relating to the use of the Australian Defence Force in the enforcement of law against individual citizens and aliens. This function is normally the responsibility of the police but there are pressures in Australia and overseas for the wider use of armed forces in this field. Traditional restraints on the employment of armed forces in this capacity date back to parliamentary resistance to the power of the Crown. Several barriers, constitutional, legal and institutional, have developed to ensure that the executive cannot easily abuse its necessary control over the armed forces in a way that endangers civil liberties. While there is no serious danger of such abuse at present, several issues need to be monitored.