The court attempts to eliminate the partisan nature of parliament and gives the determination of electoral disputes to an independent and dispassionate, neutral body.

The Court's jurisdiction over disputed electoral returns can be traced to the practices of the United Kingdom Parliament.

There were disputes between the Chancery Court and the House of Commons as to which body had the authority to determine who was rightly elected to Parliament.

In 1770, the Grenville Act 1770 (UK) established a form of jury system in which a Select Committee of the House of Commons handled the determination of these disputes.

In 1868, the Parliamentary Elections Act 1868 (UK) was passed, conferring jurisdiction on two judges of the Queen's Bench to determine these issues.

Essentially, voting along party lines made these disputes an exercise in the numbers rather than a determination on the merits.

Western Australia and Tasmania had already transferred jurisdiction over disputed returns to their respective Supreme Courts.

In effect, the Supreme Court exercises the jurisdiction of disputed returns, rather than actually as a special tribunal or as acting as persona designata.

[5] In making a decision, the Court must exercise its judgment according to its good conscience and according to what it considers to be the substantial merits of the case as to whether the respective common law or statutory criteria have been met.

[7] In the same year, the court also determined a preliminary issue for a petition concerning the election return for the Electoral district of Greenslopes.

[8] In 1998, the court heard a petition concerning the election held on 13 June 1998 of a member of parliament for the Electoral district of Mansfield.

The petitioner was the former sitting member representing the Liberals whilst the Labor candidate was declared elected.

The basis of his applications was a “remedy of long standing defects in respect of the manner in which the State and Nation’s affairs” are conducted,[10] or in other words, that the Queensland Government was unconstitutional.