Blessing Judicial Wisdom: Law Reporting in New Zealand - A Digital State in the Sand
![handle is hein.journals/auslwlib19 and id is 28 raw text is: Blessing Judicial Wisdom: Law Reporting in New Zealand -
a Digital State in the Sand
Donna Buckingham, University of Otago, New Zealand
At the Melbourne Cross Currents Confer-
ence in September 2010, a panel engaged in
a reportedly animated discussion on the issue
of official law reports. Donna Buckingham'
was absent from the panel - a failed attempt
to navigate a tram stop aggravated a recently
healed fibula, broken while jumping railway
lines. She has yet to imagine where the third
incident involving lines might occur and tries
to avoid even digitally crossed ones.
That is easier said than done when consider-
ing the future of law reporting. The discussion
tends to meld three questions: the 'authorised'
or 'official' status of some reported decisions,
the proliferation of report series, and the risk
of a judicial 'no citation' regime as a response
to electronic access to unpublished (and there-
fore unreported) decisions.
This piece sketches the New Zealand context
and tries to unpick some of the above issues
along the way. It points to the irony that
online publication and hyperlinking (the
'new' value adding) has pushed back a proper
analysis of the function of 'authorised' (and
other) reports, whose genesis is mired in the
old difficulties of authentication and distribu-
tion. Any stumbles are entirely the author's
own.
Authorised Law Reporting in
New Zealand: a brief sketch
The issue of 'official' (but what in New Zealand
is termed 'authorised') reporting was legislatively
debated as recently as 2005. One member said:
[W]ild horses could not keep him away from
the chamber when the Council of Law Report-
ing Amendment Bill was on the floor, perhaps
labouring the perceived minor nature of the issue
in the parliamentary firmament.2 But the blessing
of judicial wisdom by publication lies close to
the precedential heart of the legal system.
The debate was prompted by the need to add
the Supreme Court (which began sitting in
mid-2004) to the judgment sources whose publi-
cation lies under the control of the New Zealand
Council of Law Reporting.3 The Council, statu-
torily incorporated in 1938,' has an effective
monopoly on the authorised publication/publi-
cation rights for nominated courts. It has given
its imprimatur to a single report series: the New
Donna Buckingham is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Otago and Director of
NZLII. Thanks to Judi Eathorne-Gould of the University Law Library for her comments on this article.
2 Others took the opportunity to revisit their undergraduate legal memories for the benefit of lay colleagues -
terms of legal art such as ratio decidendi and obiter dicta are reported in Hansard.
3 The New Zealand Council of Law Reporting Amendment Bill became law on 10 April 2006. It was a
legitimating exercise: several Supreme Court decisions had already been published in the NZLR by the time the
Bill entered the legislative process: eg Attorney-General v Zaoui (No. 2) [2005] 1 NZLR 690.
4 Council members are the Attorney General, a High Court Judge, the Solicitor-General, the President of the New
Zealand Law Society (NZLS) and five members appointed by the NZLS Council, reflecting the dominant hand
of the profession in the formation and development of the New Zealand Council of Law Reporting.
24 AUSTRALIAN LAW LIBRARIAN. Vol 19 No. 1 2011.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/auslwlib19&div=10&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Blessing Judicial Wisdom: Law Reporting in New Zealand - A Digital State in the Sand
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most