In the past year, the Supreme Court has witnessed an increase in both urgent hearings and cases requiring panels of more than five justices.
The court’s Annual Report and Accounts, laid before Parliament this week, reveals the Court sat as a panel of seven or nine in 14% of appeals in 2015/16 compared to 12% and 9% in the previous two years.
Larger panels tend to sit where the court is being asked to depart from a previous decision of the Supreme Court or House of Lords, or where a case raises an issue of particularly high constitutional or public importance. The report shows the number of urgent cases—where initial application proceeds to full judgment within weeks—rose from three in 2014-15 to nine this year.
In total, the court heard 92 appeals in 104 days, and delivered 81 judgments. There were more decisions relating to children, tax and tort law than in previous years.
Unusually, there were no cases considering detention or extradition issues. Permission to appeal was granted in 32% of cases.
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