Foreword by Chief Justice of NSW

This Review sets out an overview of the structure, organisation and procedures adopted by the Court for the purposes of discharging its constitutional responsibilities pursuant to the common law and statutes of both the New South Wales and Commonwealth Parliaments. The Review also provides information of the Court’s stewardship of the resources made available to it.

The full detail of the Court’s contribution to the people of New South Wales exists in the large volume of documentation produced by the Court – encompassing tens of thousands of pages of judgments and hundreds of thousands of pages of transcript. The bald figures of filings, disposals and pending caseload, upon which this Review reports in some detail, does not reflect the richness which is contained in the considerable volume of documentation which the Court’s judicial officers and registrars generate in the course of the year.

An indication of the contribution made by the Court, and of the effectiveness and efficiency of its procedures, can be gleaned from this Review, which contains information of a quantitative kind about how the Court has dealt with its caseload and the speed with which litigants have had their disputes resolved.

However, the primary measure of the Court’s performance must be qualitative: fidelity to the law and the fairness of its processes and outcomes. This Review sets out in short summary a few of the cases decided in the year 2007. This is but a small sample of the 2000 or so separate substantive judgments delivered by the 51 judicial officers of the Court.

The judges of the Court are conscious of the fact that this public confidence in the administration of justice cannot be taken for granted and must be continually earned, so that that confidence is continually replenished. A Review of this character cannot provided anything other than a general indication of the extent to which the Court has performed its duties in such a manner as to justify the high level of trust that the public of New South Wales displays in the operations of the Court.

One of the ways in which this trust has been earned during the course of this year is by the participation of members of the public in the entire process of the administration of justice, whether as litigants, as witnesses, or as jurors. Each year thousands of citizens of New South Wales acquire direct experience of the operations of the Court in one of these ways.

I am confident that, during the course of 2007, the rule of law was administered by the judicial officers of the Court with a high level of independence, impartiality, integrity, efficacy and efficiency. I have no doubt that that will continue to be the case.