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In 1906, at the request of the Justices, two more seats were added to the bench, with Isaacs and Higgins the appointees. After O'Connor's death in 1912, an amendment to the Judiciary Act 1903 expanded the bench to seven. For most of 1930 two seats were left vacant due to monetary constraints placed on the court by the Depression. The economic downturn had also led to a reduction in litigation and consequently less work for the court. After Sir Isaac Isaacs retired in 1931, his seat was left empty, and in 1933 an amendment to the Judiciary Act officially reduced the number of seats to six. However, this led to some decisions being split three-all. With the appointment of William Webb in 1946, the number of seats returned to seven, and since then the court has had a full complement of seven Justices. As of 2013 there have been 50 Justices, twelve of whom have been Chief Justice. Recent developments in composition Current Justices Susan Crennan and Susan Kiefel are the second and third women to sit on the bench, after Justice Mary Gaudron. With Virginia Bell having taken office in February 2009, there are three women sitting concurrently on the bench, alongside four men. More than half of the Justices, twenty-six, have been residents of New South Wales (with twenty-four of these graduates of Sydney Law School). Thirteen were from Victoria, eight from Queensland and three from Western Australia. No Justices have been residents of South Australia, Tasmania or any of the territories. The majority of the Justices have been from Protestant backgrounds, with a smaller number from Catholic backgrounds. Sir Isaac Isaacs was of Polish/Jewish background, the only representative of any other faith. He also remains the only High Court Justice from a non Anglo-Celtic background. Michael Kirby was the first openly gay justice in the history of the Court; his replacement, Virginia Bell, is the first lesbian,[114] who has been an active campaigner for gay and lesbian rights and was one of the participants in the first Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in 1978.[115] Almost every single judge on the High Court has taken silk as a Queen's Counsel (QC), King's Counsel (KC) or Senior Counsel (SC) before appointment. The exceptions are: Justice Sir Hayden Starke (although he refused to take silk), Justices Sir Edward McTiernan, Sir William Webb, Sir Cyril Walsh, Michael Kirby and current Chief Justice, Robert French. From the retirement of Ian Callinan in 2007 until the appointment of Stephen Gageler in 2012, every justice of the High Court had prior judicial experience (serving on state supreme courts or the Federal Court of Australia) for the only time in its history. Although 13 justices of the Court had previously served in state, colonial or federal Parliaments, no parliamentarian has been appointed to the Court since Lionel Murphy's appointment in 1975. Facilities Building High Court building, view from the lake In the 1950s, Prime Minister Robert Menzies established a plan to develop Canberra and construct other important national buildings. A 1959 plan featured a new building for the High Court on the shore of Lake Burley Griffin, next to the location for the new Parliament House and the National Library of Australia.[citation needed] This plan was abandoned in 1968 and the location of the Parliament was moved, later settling on the present site on Capital Hill.[citation needed] In March 1968, the government announced that the court would move to Canberra.[citation needed] In 1972 an international competition was held attracting 158 entries. In 1973 the firm of Edwards Madigan Torzillo Briggs was declared the winner of the two-stage competition. Architect Chris Kringas was the Principal Designer and Director in charge working with Feiko Bouman. In March 1975, only one month before construction began, Kringas died aged 38. Following his death, Feiko Bouman, Hans Marelli and Colin Madigan supervised the construction of the design.[116] The constructed building is relevantly identical to the 1973 competition design. Construction began in April 1975 on the shore of Lake Burley Griffin, in the Parliamentary Triangle. The site is just to the east of the axis running between Capital Hill and the Australian War Memorial. The High Court building houses three courtrooms, Justices' chambers, and the Court's main registry, library, and corporate services facilities. It is an unusual and distinctive structure, built in the brutalist style, and features an immense public atrium with a 24-metre-high roof. The neighbouring National Gallery was also designed by the firm of Edwards Madigan Torzillo and Briggs. There are similarities between the two buildings in material and style but significant differences in architectural form and spatial concept. The building was completed in 1980 and the majority of the court's sittings have been held in Canberra since then. The High Court and National Gallery Precinct were added to the Australian National Heritage List in November 2007.[117] Online The High Court makes itself generally available to the public through its own website.[118] All of its judgments, as well as transcripts of its hearings since 2009 and other materials, are made available, free of charge, through the Australasian Legal Information Institute. Since October 2013, audio-visual recordings of full-court hearings held in Canberra have been available on its website.[119] |
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