The Fraser government objected to produce these documents, arguing that they were confidential and were subject to 'crown privilege'.

What is the Attorney-General's authority for saying that he cannot rely on Crown privilege in relation to cross undertakings for damages?

The Parliamentary Commissioner can examine the relevant departmental files and has wide powers to call witnesses, neither is his investigation restricted by the doctrine of crown privilege.

This reasserted the traditional doctrine of Crown privilege but also made the issue justiciable, ultimately giving rise to the doctrine of Public Interest Immunity.

(The Pope had granted the Spanish Crown privileges, specifically the rights to propose candidates for ecclesiastical office and to inspect papal documents destined for the New World.)

Executive privilege is a specific instance of the more general common-law principle of deliberative process privilege and is believed to trace its roots to the English Crown Privilege.

PII was previously known as Crown privilege, and derived from the same principle as the immunity of the Crown from prosecution before the Crown Proceedings Act 1947.

The lasting significance of the Court's ruling was that it imposed a very narrow view of when a government could claim 'crown privilege', finding that even cabinet documents were not exempt from production before the courts.

The Act also reasserted the common law doctrine of Crown privilege but by making it, for the first time, justiciable paved the way for the development of the modern law of Public Interest Immunity.

On the contrary, I read them as dismantling an old Crown privilege and substituting for it a principle upon which, in certain limited circumstances, the court has a discretion whether or not to require an undertaking in damages from the Crown as law enforcer.