The workload of the High Court is prodigious. In its first century the court has produced more than 10,000 reported judgments and an unquantified number of unreported ones.
In 2002-03, the Court heard 309 applications for special leave to appeal. Of these 62 were granted and scheduled for full hearing, three were granted by the appeal itself dismissed instanter and one was granted and the appeal allowed instanter. Often the full hearing of an appeal will not occur until the following financial year. In 2002-03, the Court heard 54 civil appeals and 10 criminal appeals following earlier grants of special leave to appeal. Taking out immigration matters, the court heard about 30 other cases, mainly constitutional matters.
Immigration matters have swollen the Court’s case list in the past two years. In a normal year, the Court would deal with between 20 and 30 applications for constitutional writs. That rose to 300 in 2001-02 (287 of them immigration matters) and 2131 in 2002-03 (2105 of them immigration). The sudden increase in immigration applications directly to the High Court was caused by changes to the Migration Act which restricted access by aggrieved people to the Federal Court and restricted the capacity of the High Court to remit immigration matters to the Federal Court or the Federal Magistrates Court.
It remains an unresolved issue.