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PART THREE: OVERSEAS MODELS CURRENT TRENDS IN LAW
REFORM MACHINERY IN THE UK, CANADA AND AUSTRALIA
129. This section analyses the current trends of law reform commissions overseas.
There is a wealth of law reform machinery around the world specifically
designed to recommend changes and improvements in the law to ensure it
reflects, among other things, economic and technological developments,
different social values and evolving concepts of justice.
130. In accordance with the Terms of Reference the evaluator has confined the
research of overseas law reform machinery to countries with similar legal
systems to our own. The jurisdictions that have been researched are:
(a) Australia at both Federal and State level;
(b) Canada at both Federal and Provincial level; and
(c) The United Kingdom.
131. The focus has been primarily on two areas:
· Changes in the machinery of law reform in the last 10 years; and
· Any evaluative material on the performance of the overseas law reform
agencies.
The Continued Need for Law Commissions
132. It is possible to isolate five broad categories of law reform bodies, as reflected in
Table 1 below: