Chu Kheng Lim v Minister
| Chu Kheng Lim v Minister | |
|---|---|
| Court | High Court of Australia |
| Full case name | Chu Kheng Lim and Others v The Minister for Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs and Another |
| Decided | December 8, 1992 |
| Citations | [1992] HCA 64 176 CLR 1 |
| Court membership | |
| Judges sitting |
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| Case opinions | |
| The executive branch may detain persons for non-punitive purposes. Only the judiciary branch can detain persons punitively. | |
| Laws applied | |
| Migration Act 1958 (Cth) Australian Constitution | |
Chu Kheng Lim v Minister for Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs is a ruling of the High Court of Australia regarding Australian immigration law, specifically the ability of the government to detain illegal immigrants. More broadly, the decision was a landmark ruling regarding the separation of powers in Australian constitutional law. The case established the Chu Kheng Lim principle, which states that the executive branch may only detain people for non-punitive purposes, and that only the judicial branch can detain people punitively.
The principle was bolstered by the 2023 decision NZYQ v Minister for Immigration, which added a temporal limit and reasonably necessary test to the Chu Kheng Lim principle, closing the infinite detention loophole created in Al-Kateb v Godwin in 2004.