I love how we have nine (state and territory) 'Supreme' courts, all of which are outranked by the one (national) 'High' court. Someone didn't get their semantics right, back in the day.
It is due to the fact that all the Australia states were once sovereign nations and each state’s “supreme” courts existed before Australian federation. The same exists in the USA with the state supreme courts.
> The same exists in the USA with the state supreme courts.
OTOH, a real violation of expected semantics occurs in the New York State court system where the ultimate appellate court is the "Court of Appeals", the trial court of general jurisdiction is the "Supreme Court", and the intermediate appellate court between the two is the "Supreme Court, Appellate Division".
Canada uses the same scheme. It isn't incorrect, just different. A "supreme" court is one of general jurisdiction and are the highest court to which an issue may be brought (as opposed to appellate courts which do not hear issues directly). They are supreme over courts of limited jurisdiction such as family or probate courts.
The US Supreme Court (federal) actually uses the same name scheme as New York and Canada. All district and appellate are limited geographically, with the supreme court being the only court of general jurisdiction (Amongst the fed. All US fed courts are technically limited). But some actions can still be brought directly to the SCOTUS such as disputes between states over land. So it is not purely an appellate court, hence the term supreme.
Two national courts actually, there's the Federal Court too.
Then you have all the specialised courts, like the Family Courts, the Environmental Courts, the Court of Disputed Returns and many others that I can't remember off the top of my head.
And before the 1980's, you could technically appeal a high court decision to the Privy Council in the UK in certain circumstances, although I don't think that was ever used.
Talking about anachronistic ties to the UK, Australia should do something about all the UK citizens on the electoral roll. There are hundreds of thousands of non-Australian citizens (i.e UK citizens who arrived before 1984) who can vote in Australian elections. Really if you can’t decide if you want to be an Australian citizen after being here for 30 years then you really should stop voting in Australian elections!
Unless something has changed recently, a citizen of a Commonwealth nation (e.g. Australia) can vote in UK elections without being a citizen, as long as they are a resident. Maybe it's about reciprocity?
Often a court is the same judges as another court, so the proliferation can be illusory. For example, justices of the High Court recently sat as the Court of Disputed Returns in that WA Senate cockup.
