the case was the first of several in which the high court applied the implied intergovernmental immunities doctrine, relied on in the supreme court of the united states case of "mcculloch v. maryland", which held that the state and commonwealth governments were normally immune from each other's laws, and which, along with the reserved state powers doctrine, would be a significant feature of australian constitutional law until both doctrines were rejected in the landmark engineers' case in 1920.