38.
between laws determining or affecting the status of an artificial person or its powers and laws affecting its activities. In particular, it is necessary to say more about the reasons of Isaacs J.
86 Isaacs J identified two relevant limitations on the power conferred by s 51(xx). First, only some kinds of corporation fell within the power; secondly, the corporations that "come within the legislative reach of the Commonwealth must be corporations already existing"[1]. Although, as explained earlier, it is not necessary to consider what are "trading or financial corporations formed within the limits of the Commonwealth", it is interesting to observe that Isaacs J regarded "a purely manufacturing company"[2] and "those domestic corporations, for instance, which are constituted for municipal, mining, manufacturing, religious, scholastic, charitable, scientific, and literary purposes, and possibly others more nearly approximating a character of trading"[3] as falling outside the class of trading or financial corporations. The basis for excluding mining and manufacturing corporations from the class of trading or financial corporations was not explained.
87 Because "[t]he creation of corporations and their consequent investiture with powers and capacities was left entirely to the States"[4] it was, in the view of Isaacs J[5], "absurd" to restrict s 51(xx) to power over internal company regulation. It was absurd because, if the States had the power of incorporation, that power, "effectively exercised, could go far to nullify"[6] any power over internal company regulation. Rather, because the corporations the subject of the power were legal persons created according to the law of a State or a foreign country, they are[7]:
