The Federal Judiciary is administered by the Higher Judicial Council which compiles regular statistical reports on the state of the judiciary and its caseload, outside the 3 Kurdish governorates administered from Erbil, published on its excellent website.
The most recent report, issued in April 2009, relates to the number of judges and reveals that there are 1207 members of the federal judiciary in Iraq of whom 881 are judges (301 of those being investigative judges) and 326 are prosecutors. 62 of the 1207 are women – 12 judges and 50 prosecutors. Most of the women are based in Baghdad.
The appellate court centres are Baghdad Rusafa, Baghdad Karkh and one in each of the other 14 governorates.
A review of the statistics regularly published by the Higher Judicial Council indicates that the judiciary is overworked at all levels. To give one example, the 22 member federal Court of Cassation is dealing with approximately 25,000 cases every year.
See court structure diagram