Editing Statute of Westminster 1931 (section)

==History==

{{main|British Empire|Dominion}}

England, and [[Acts of Union 1707|Britain after 1707]], had colonies outside of Europe since the late 16th century. These early colonies were largely run by private companies rather than the Crown directly, but by the end of the century had ([[British East India Company|except for India]]) been subsumed under Crown control. Oversight of these colonies oscillated between [[Salutary neglect|relatively lax enforcement]] of laws and centralization of power depending on the politics of the day, but the Parliament in Westminster always remained supreme. Most colonies in North America [[American Revolution|broke away from British rule]] and became independent as the [[United States]] in the late 18th century, where after British attention turned towards Australia and Asia.<ref name="British policy in 19th century">{{cite news |last1=ní Fhlathúin |first1=Máire |title=The British Empire in the Nineteenth Century |url=https://www.gale.com/intl/essays/maire-ni-fhlathuin-british-empire-nineteenth-century#:~:text=British%20settlements%20in%20Africa%20were,start%20of%20the%20twentieth%20century. |access-date=27 February 2025 |work=Century UK Periodicals |agency=University of Nottingham |publisher=Gale |date=2008 |location=Detroit}}</ref>

British policy with regards to the colonies began to be rationalized and streamlined in the 19th century. [[Responsible government]], wherein colonial governments were held accountable to legislatures just as the British cabinet was responsible to the British Parliament, was granted to colonies beginning with Nova Scotia in 1848. Confusion existed as to what extent British legislation applied to the colonies; in [[South Australia]], justice [[Benjamin Boothby]] caused a nuisance by striking down several local laws as contrary ("repugnant") to the legislation in Britain. Westminster rectified this situation by passing the [[Colonial Laws Validity Act 1865]], which allowed the colonies to pass legislation different from that in Britain provided that it was not repugnant to any law expressly passed by the Imperial Parliament to extend to that colony. This had the dual effect of granting colonies autonomy within their borders while subordinating them to the British Parliament otherwise.<ref name="British responsible government policy">{{cite encyclopedia |title=British Empire: Dominance and dominions |url=https://www.britannica.com/place/British-Empire/Dominance-and-dominions |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |access-date=27 February 2025 |date=20 July 1998}}</ref>

Most of the remaining colonies in North America{{snd}}everything north of the United States with the exception of Newfoundland{{snd}}[[Canadian Confederation|were merged into a federal polity known as "Canada"]] in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Canada was termed a "[[dominion]]", a term previously used in slightly different contexts in English history, and granted a broad array of powers between the federal government and the provincial governments.<ref name="Canada becomes a dominion">{{cite web |title=Anniversary of the Statute of Westminster |url=https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/important-commemorative-days/anniversary-statute-westminster.html |website=Canada Culture & History |publisher=Canadian Government |access-date=27 February 2025}}</ref> Australia was similarly deemed a dominion when it [[Federation of Australia|federated in 1901]], as were Newfoundland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the [[Irish Free State]] in the first decades of the 20th century.<ref name="Statute history">{{cite news |author1=McIntosh Andrew |author2=Hillmer Norman |author3=Foot Richard |title=Statute of Westminster, 1931 |url=https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/statute-of-westminster |access-date=27 February 2025 |work=The Canadian Encyclopedia |agency=Historica Canada |publisher=Government of Canada |date=7 February 2006}}</ref>

[[File:ImperialConference.jpg|thumb|King [[George V]] surrounded by the prime ministers of the various dominions at the 1926 conference|alt=A monochrome photograph of men wearing white tie with breeches, three of them (Baldwin for the United Kingdom, George V, and King for Canada, from viewer's left to right) seated in the front row and five (Monroe for Newfoundland, Coates for New Zealand, Bruce for Australia, Hertzog for South Africa, and Cosgrave for Ireland, ditto) standing behind them.]]

Dominions did not possess full sovereignty on an equal footing with the United Kingdom. The parliament of Canada passed a law barring appeals from [[Supreme Court of Canada|its Supreme Court]] to the imperial [[Judicial Committee of the Privy Council]] in 1888, but in 1925 a judgement of the Privy Council [[Nadan v R|determined that this law was invalid]].<ref>''Nadan v The King'', [1926] AC 482 (PC).</ref> Combined with the [[King–Byng affair]] the following year, this bred resentment in Canada and led to its insistence on full sovereignty. The leadership of the Irish Free State, meanwhile, was dominated by those who had fought a [[Irish War of Independence|war of independence]] against Britain and who had agreed to dominion status as a compromise; they took a maximalist view of the autonomy they had secured in the [[Anglo-Irish Treaty]] and pushed for recognition of their state's sovereignty, which would have implications for the other dominions as well.<ref>{{cite book | last=Younger | first=Calton | title=Ireland's Civil War | publisher=Fontana | location=London | year=1988 |edition=6th | isbn=978-0-00-686098-3 | pages=233–235}}</ref> The [[1926 Imperial Conference]] led to the [[Balfour Declaration of 1926|Balfour declaration]] that dominions were equal in status to one another and to the United Kingdom. Further conferences in 1929 and [[1930 Imperial Conference|1930]] worked out a substantive framework to implement this declaration. This became the Statute of Westminster 1931.<ref name="Statute history" />