34.
circumstances under which the corporation will be granted recognition as a legal entity in Australia". The central focus of the power was seen by O'Connor J as falling upon the status of the corporation.
78 This distinction between matters of status or internal regulation on the one hand, and relations with outsiders on the other, underpinned much of the dissenting opinion of Isaacs J. But whereas Griffith CJ and O'Connor J had identified s 51(xx) as confined (in the case of Griffith CJ) to controlling the capacity of a corporation to enter a field of operations, as distinct from controlling the corporation's operations in that field, or (in the case of O'Connor J) to regulating the recognition of constitutional corporations throughout Australia, Isaacs J saw the distinction as requiring the opposite allocation of powers between federal and State legislatures. Isaacs J concluded[1] that questions of status and corporate powers were beyond federal legislative power and "left to the States". Rather[2]:
"The power [given by s 51(xx)] does not look behind the charter, or concern itself with purely internal management, or mere personal preparation to act; it views the beings upon which it is to operate in their relations to outsiders, or, in other words, in the actual exercise of their corporate powers, and entrusts to the Commonwealth Parliament the regulation of the conduct of the corporations in their transactions with or as affecting the public." (emphasis in original)
79 These views of Isaacs J, upon which the plaintiffs in the present matters placed such store, and to which it will be necessary to return in some detail, may be contrasted with those of Barton J and of Higgins J.
80 Barton J said[3] that he did not dissent from the reasons of Griffith CJ, but Barton J rested his opinion upon the doctrine of reserved powers. He said[4] that the relevant question was:
