The Madras High Court is one of four charter high courts of colonial India established in the four Presidency Towns of Madras, Bombay, Allahabad and Calcutta by letters patent granted by Queen Victoria, dated 26 June 1862.

The present buildings were officially inaugurated on 12 July 1892, when the then Madras Governor, Beilby, Baron Wenlock, handed over the key to then Chief Justice Sir Arthur Collins.

[7] British India's three presidency towns of Madras (Chennai), Bombay (Mumbai), and Calcutta (Kolkata) were each granted a High Court by letters patent dated 26 June 1862.

[8] The letters patent were issued by Queen Victoria under the authority of the British parliament's Indian High Courts Act 1861.

The Court was required to decide cases in accordance with justice, equity and good conscience.

The Madras High Court was a pioneer in Original Side jurisdiction reform in favor of Indian practitioners as early as the 1870s.

The history means that the decisions of the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council are still binding on it, provided that the ratio of a case has not been overruled by the Supreme Court of India.

Brassington initially prepared a plan to construct a building with 11 court halls at an estimate of ₹945,000.

[10] Save for the steel girders and some ornamental tiles, almost all the material for the construction was procured locally.

[10] The High Court building was damaged in the shelling of Madras by SMS Emden on 22 September 1914, at the beginning of the First World War.

Justices of the Madras High Court are led by orderlies who bear a ceremonial mace made of silver.

It was started at the house of the Vakil Bar's senior member Sir S. Subramania Iyer in Mylapore in 1888.

The objectives of the journal were laid out in the preface of the first issue: In addition to giving our own reports of the decisions of the High Courts in Madras and other places, we hope to place before our readers translations of various Hindu Law Books which remain yet untranslated, insofar as they have bearing on questions which practically arise for decision every day in our Courts of Justice.

We propose further from time to time, to place side by side the conflicting decisions of the various Courts in India on the same point in the hope that such procedure will enable the Courts to act in greater harmony than they do at present in the interpretation of Acts and enunciation of general principles of law and when this is not possible, to enable the Legislature to bring about such harmony by removing the ambiguities which may have given rise to such discordant views.The Madras Law Journal is known for its quickness and reporting accuracy and its discriminating selection of cases to be reported.

[17] The Madras High Court sits at Chennai and has jurisdiction over the state of Tamil Nadu.