Language – Hornbook Law

The language “Hornbook law” – often used synonymously with “black letter law” – refers to a legal principle or concept that has been long established and accepted as part of the law.

In United States education, a “Hornbook” is a one volume legal treatise written primarily for law students on subjects typically covered by a law school course.

The Macquarie Dictionary (Online) defines “hornbook” as “a primer, or book of rudiments”.  In turn it defines “primer” as “any, often small, book of elementary principles:  A primer in phonetics.

The following references to “Hornbook law” may be found in the authorities:

Alexander v Minister for Home Affairs (2022) 276 CLR 336 at [198] per Kiefel CJ, Keane and Gleeson JJ:

The statement quoted above from the joint judgment in Chetcuti should not be read as rejecting a century of hornbook constitutional law. Rather, and consistently with the acknowledgement in the previous paragraph in Chetcuti that a law of the Parliament might need to be disapplied to the extent of “constitutional overreach” by treating “all non citizens as aliens”, the statement in Chetcuti should be understood as saying no more than that the Commonwealth Parliament has power to set the criteria for who will, and who will not, be a statutory alien and the consequences of that, provided always that the exercise of that power is within the boundaries of the constitutional concept of “alien”. In oral submissions, the defendants quite correctly accepted that position, conceding that the aliens power “cannot be used to treat, as an alien, someone who cannot answer that description on the ordinary understanding of the word”.

Yi v Park [2024] NSWCA 187 at [43] per Bell CJ:

There being no loan in or around 2012 in relation to the First Agreement, there was therefore no loan which was repayable on demand as at 13 July 2017 when the Loan Agreement was entered into, and thus no act of forbearance which was capable of supplying the consideration for the Loan Agreement. It is hornbook law that past consideration is not good consideration: Eastwood v Kenyon (1840) 11 Ad & E 438; SAS Realty Developments Pty Ltd v Kerr [2013] NSWCA 56 at [69].