The High Court’s August round of special leave deliberations has yielded six grants of leave to appeal, following a very slow start:

• Wednesday 24th: None out of 3 applications granted (on papers, Bell & Keane JJ)
• Thursday 25th: None out of 7 applications granted (on papers, Nettle & Gordon JJ)
• Tuesday 30th: None out of 8 applications granted (on papers, Bell & Gageler JJ)
• Wednesday 31st: None out of 6 applications granted (on papers, Bell & Keane JJ)
• Thursday 1st: 3 out of 21 applications granted (on papers, 7 Kiefel & Keane JJ (no grants),  7 Kiefel & Nettle JJ (1 grant), 7 Gageler & Gordon JJ (2 grants))
• Friday 2nd: 3 out of 7 applications granted (oral hearings; 4 Kiefel & Nettle JJ (2 grants), 3 Gageler & Gordon JJ (1 grant)). (There was also a further matter where leave was granted and the appeal allowed, by consent of the parties.)

As usual, French CJ did not decide any special leave matters. As per recent practice, the pairs of judges assigned are no longer always geographically connected. One interesting development is just two pairs of judges were responsible for all six grants (both written and oral), with Gageler  & Gordon JJ responsible for all the criminal grants and Kiefel & Nettle JJ responsible for all the civil grants. There also appears to be a slight increase in information included with the refusals, for example Bell & Gageler JJ’s refusal of leave to Matthew and Elizabeth Pallet, campaigners in favour of medical cannabis, which indicates that their unsuccessful argument was a constitutional challenge to Victoria’s drug laws.

The six cases in which grants were made are: Continue reading →