The seven habits of a highly effective High Court

Abstract

[Conclusion]:The truth is that the question of success and failure in the High Court is such a large and diverse one, and such an invitation to knee-jerk reactions based on undisclosed or unarticulated or selective criteria, that there is not a lot of profit in pursuing it, unless the exercise contributes in some way to clarifying the criteria and the context, and thereby, as I have tried to indicate, becomes a gateway to plumbing the mysterious depths of the nature of the judicial process. I will focus on particular cases, but the twin concepts of success and failure can be applied to every aspect of the High Court’s being, from the achievement of its very establishment—undoubtedly a success in the face of considerable opposition—and of its early struggle against the Privy Council to be the final arbiter of constitutional questions—to the calibre of its members, the integrity of its processes, the quality of its scholarship, the coherence of its doctrines, the aptness of its outcomes, and the robustness, the resonance, even the reverberation, of its reputation.