This project arose from the Commission’s recommendation in their Report, Disclosure to Court of Defendants’ Previous Convictions, Similar Offending, and Bad Character (R103, 2008). The Commission recommended that Government should...
Our projects
Each project is an area of law or subject matter that the Law Commission has agreed to review. The Commission works on several projects at a time. Together, these projects make up the Commission's annual work programme.
Use the search filters below to find particular projects. For more information on how we work see how we conduct projects.
Project status
Areas of law
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In 2011, the Law Commission was asked to review the use of pecuniary penalties as a regulatory tool. These are financial penalties that policymakers are increasingly opting to use in place of criminal sanctions, to punish and deter misconduct in...
In October 1997 the Law Commission started a new project on the subject of international trade with the project’s first report, Electronic Commerce Part One: A Guide for the Legal and Business Community (NZLC R50) released a year later. This is...
The Judicature Act 1908 is over one hundred years old and has been amended many times. Many of the sections in the Act are outdated, and it contains “hidden” commercial law and judicial review provisions. The focus of the Law Commission’s...
The Law Commission has worked closely with the Ministry of Economic Development in a project to rewrite the Credit (Repossession) Act 1997, which has been found to have many practical difficulties with it.
For this project, the Commission reviews the Trustee Act 1956 and trust law generally. In the first stage of this review, the Report, Review of the Law of Trusts: A Trusts Act for New Zealand (R130) is preceded by six Issues Papers. The...
This project arises from ongoing work on damages and the introduction into Parliament of the Employment Contracts Bill.
For this project, the Commission reviews existing rules of evidence around admissibility of previous convictions, similar offending and bad character. In particular, the extent to which the court is made aware of prior convictions of an accused,...
This project reviews existing rules providing access to Court records and developing principles to govern access to Court records, the retention and archiving of records. It considers the appropriateness of a single code providing rules for all...
The purpose of this project is to enquire into and report on the following issues:
- Is there a need for changes, whether administrative or legislative, to address problems which have arisen in the period leading up to and in the course...