1 ADDRESS TO THE   ALREASA CONFERENCE CAPE TOWN 15-17 MARCH 2005 by HON JUSTICE J BRUCE ROBERTSON PRESIDENT NEW ZEALAND LAW COMMISSION LAW REFORM WHAT IS OUR KNITTING? HOW DO WE STICK TO IT? The Development of Law Commissions  In 1597, Sir Francis Bacon urged the appointment of six Commissioners to investigate obsolete and contradictory laws in England and to report to Parliament regularly¹.  He noted –   “heaping up of laws without digesting them maketh but a chaos and confusion and turneth the laws many times to become but snares for the people.”² In  the  ensuing  400  years,  this  refrain  has  been  returned  to  both  in  England  and  in  the colonies  it  spawned  around  the  world  and  which  eventually  became  independent  and self-governing countries. Jeremy   Bentham, in  the  early  19^th  Century,  demanded  a  permanent  full-time  body charged with the duty of revising the whole body of the law in England and reducing it                                                  1   Australian  Law  Reform  Commission    Annual  Report  1975   (Australian   Government   Publishing   Services, Canberra, 1975) 5 2   Francis Bacon  The Philosophical works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, viscount St. Albans ... methodized, and made English, from the originals. With occasional notes, to explain what is obscure ... by Peter Shaw (Printed for J.J. and P. Knapton, London, 1733) Vol. 1 of 3, 346