The courts are constructed in red brick with sandstone dressings and steeply-pitched slate roofs.

[6] Worthington drew both on his rejected designs for Manchester Town Hall, and on his earlier plans for Ellen Wilkinson High School, although the central tower he used there is placed asymmetrically at the Police Courts, due to the constraints of the site.

"[4] Following the completion of new Courts of Justice in Crown Square in May 1961, the Lord Chancellor's Department decided to close the Minshull Street building in 1989,[7] but as the volume of cases increased in the early 1990s, the Department decided to re-open the Minshull Street building again to support the Courts of Justice in Crown Square.

The original courtyard was glazed over and an extension was added to the Aytoun Street side of the courts.

[9] Notable cases include the conviction of the gambler, Ming Jiang, in February 2023, for the murder of his gambling companion, Yang Liu, whose headless body was found on a country lane.