Note 299 — Chapter XV · PERSONS.

The Commonwealth of Australia, for example, and also the constituent Australian states are now to be deemed for certain purposes bodies politic and corporate. For by virtue of Australian legislation they can now sue and be sued in their own names, and possess other attributes of personality; thus an action will now lie at the suit of the State of Victoria against the State of New South Wales. The corporate character thus bestowed upon these states, however, is concurrent with, and not exclusive of the old common law principle which identifies the state with the King. Public lands in Australia, for example, are still the lands of the Crown, except so far as they may be expressly vested in the corporate state by statute.