This article charts the anthropomorphic muddle of English common law in dealing with "the Crown" and then turns to the Australian experience in understanding the ambit of Crown personality. The antipodean colonial period saw the creation of numerous corporate entities designed to perform "public" or "governmental" functions, but fabricated to be removed from direct political control. These bodies, variously boards, commissions and corporations created by statute, worked hard at personating the Crown, because such status brought the bountiful advantages at law claimed by the Crown. The judicial (and social) attitudes of deference to "the Crown" in the half century prior to federation left a lasting legacy that the new terms of the Constitution did nothing to shake. The appreciation of how the shield of the Crown is assessed has rolled into the 21st century in a blaze of 19th century assumptions and a corresponding lack of logic and analysis of Australia's constitutional structure and statutory interpretive technique, in particular with regard to the assumption of equality under the law, and the principle of legality.
