The first Bench of Magistrates was convened in Sydney on 19 February 1788. By 1800 sittings were held regularly in Parramatta and the Hawkesbury district, and the use of magisterial proceedings had become widespread in the Colony by the 1820s. As settlement spread during the squatting era, magistrates and their clerks performed an increasingly wide range of judicial and administrative functions, particularly in more remote areas.
Justices of the Peace were authorised to keep the peace for the territory of New South Wales by being able to arrest, take bail, bind to good behaviour and to suppress and punish riots.