By Joshua McDermid
The seminarians and staff of Corpus Christi College recently had the immense privilege of welcoming Justice Simon Steward of the High Court of Australia. On Wednesday 1 May, Justice Steward, a parishioner of Our Lady of Good Counsel, Deepdene, joined us for Evening Prayer and our community meal before addressing us and answering our questions.
Justice Steward began his talk by affirming our commitment, commenting that “it takes courage be Catholic.” He then went on to explain various aspects of what the High Court of Australia is and does. Justice Steward made the observation that while the High Court is Australia’s ‘apex court,’ it is very small by international standards and that with only seven judges, the workload is unrelenting. He also explained that the Court mostly hears appellate cases and that a large part of a judge’s work is deciding which cases should be granted leave to appeal, given that this is at the Court’s discretion.
We also gained an insight into the schedule of a High Court judge. Justice Steward outlined how the Court sits for ten months of the year, and that in each month the judges will hear cases for two weeks in Canberra and then return to their home cities to write judgements and read applications for leave to appeal. In fact, as he explained, a justice sometimes only has a week to write an entire judgement complete with references before his associates spend the next week editing.
Finally, Justice Steward answered questions about topics ranging from theories of statutory and constitutional interpretation, the place of international law in the Court’s work, and the relationship between faith and being a judge. As a community, we were extremely grateful that Justice Steward visited us, and many seminarians have commented on how fascinating it was to gain such incredible insights into an area about which many of us were not particularly familiar. We also greatly appreciated the fact that a justice of the High Court of Australia would be willing to be so open about his Catholic faith.