Should uniform civil case management principles "overarch" or "override"? Comparing Victorian and New South Wales active case management after a decade of the Civil Procedure Act 2010 (Vic)

In 2010, Victoria introduced the Civil Procedure Act 2010 (Vic), five years after New South Wales introduced the Civil Procedure Act 2005 (NSW). Both Acts have active case management as their centrepiece. However, Victoria carefully drafted its own legislation with “overarching” case management provisions, which markedly differed from the New South Wales “overriding” case management provisions that were designed to improve efficiency in the courts. This article compares the Victorian and New South Wales provisions and their implementation by superior courts with a view to considering which version, if either, should be adopted in a future potential unified Australian civil procedure law.