How supreme are NSW Supreme Court judges? … Justinian’s judicial productivity calculations … Volume of judgments per judge for the last 31 months … Guess who’s top and who’s bottom 

If you include the number of appeals on which he sat in the same period his tally rises to 341. 

The lowest scoring Supremo was The Earl of Pembroke with 34 judgments in 31 months and no appeals. To be fair, he was away from the court for seven months between April and November, 2015. In 2013 he published a stunning biography of Arthur Phillip, which in many ways was a more valuable contribution to the uplift of society than producing judgments. 

Justice David Hammerschlag, was second bottom on 42 judgments in the same period. There has been no judgments from the Hammer since June 1 this year, but next week he scheduled to sit on the big civil misfeasance case that Eddie Obeid has brought against ICAC, David Ipp and others.

Justinian’s productivity survey was sparked by the work of one of our field agents. We’ve updated the original analysis to bring the numbers up to July 28. 

The methodology involves entering each judge’s name into Caselaw and searching for Supreme Court, Court of Appeal and Court of Criminal Appeal judgments. The numbers can vary slightly each time a search is repeated.

Judges who hear short matters will have higher numbers of published judgments, but over 31 months the tally of short matters and long trials starts to average out across the court. 

The most energetic appeal judge is John Basten with 372 judgments in the last 31 months with Mark Leeming not far behind. 

Of course, writing judgments is not the sole measure of judicial productivity, but it’s a strong pointer. As a productivity benchmark, High Court judges have published the following numbers of judgments in recent calendar years: 

These are all substantial pieces of work, whereas NSW judges all determine multiple interlocutory or short applications.  

We have not included acting or associate judges or those most recently appointed. No doubt our productivity survey will prompt demands for further information, protests, appeals and arguments. There may well be special explanations for judges with low rates of production. 

As we developed more refined methodology we might be able to roll-out further surveys for other jurisdictions. Hold tight. 

Subject to all that here, in descending order of judgment production, here is the productivity scale for NSW Supremos: