The article analyses legal materials concerning the legal personality of the Commonwealth of Australia under domestic law. It argues that the Commonwealth as legal person has an existence, as a unit of the legal system, which is conceptually distinct from the Commonwealth of Australia as a nation, and the Commonwealth as federal government of that nation. Current idioms (eg ‘polity’ and ‘body politic’) have a tendency to confuse these distinctions. The article suggests, as a more appropriate way to denote the Commonwealth as legal person, the term ‘constitutional person’.
28 pages.