<P> The Gibbs court made several important decisions in Australian constitutional law . It allowed the Federal Parliament to make very wide use of the external affairs power, by holding that this power could be used to implement treaties into domestic law with very few justiciable limits . In Koowarta v Bjelke - Petersen (1982) four judges to three upheld the validity of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, although no single view had majority support . However, in the Tasmanian Dams case (1983), a majority of the court upheld federal environmental legislation under the power . </P> <P> The court also adopted a more expansive interpretation of the corporations power . In the Actors Equity case (1982), the court upheld regulations which, although they did not directly regulate corporations, indirectly protected corporations . In the Tasmanian Dams case, the court indicated that it would interpret the power to uphold legislation regulating the non-trading activities of corporations, although it did not decide the case on that basis . The external affairs power and the corporations power have both been increasingly relied on by the federal government to extend its authority in recent years . </P> <P> In administrative law, the court expanded on the doctrines of natural justice and procedural fairness in Kioa v West (1985). Although Gibbs himself dissented on those points, he did decide that executive decision makers were obliged to take humanitarian principles into consideration . Outside of specific areas of law, the court was also involved in several cases of public significance, including the Chamberlain case (1984), concerning Lindy Chamberlain, and A v Hayden (1984), concerning the botched ASIS exercise at the Sheraton Hotel in Melbourne . </P> <P> Sir Anthony Mason became Chief Justice in 1987 . The Mason court was very stable, with only one change in the bench in its eight years, the appointment of Michael McHugh after Sir Ronald Wilson's retirement . The court under Mason was widely regarded as the most liberal bench in the court's history . </P>

Who makes the decisions in the high court