Legislation: Parliamentary Debates / Acts / Subordinate Legislation / Updating Legislation
Case Law: New Zealand Court System / Law Reports / Updating Cases
Secondary Sources: Digests / Periodical Indexes

The internet has many useful repositories of New Zealand legal materials. The Library of Congress world as is An Introduction to New Zealand Law & Legal Information 2002 from LLRX.com.

Electronic full text versions of recent Bills are available on Legislation NZ.

Recent Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) are available online, but access to the archive requires a subscription.

New Zealand Statutes
The Law Library holds the annual volumes of New Zealand statutes. There are usually three volumes per year. The last volume also contains local and private acts.
Print: L/KH316/N1

New Zealand statutes are also available online from the Public Access to Legislation Project. It is important to note that these are not consolidated.

Reprinted Statutes of New Zealand
Rather than publishing reprinted Acts as individual publications, as in Australia, New Zealand statutes are reprinted in volumes entitled The Reprinted Statutes of New Zealand.
Print: L/KH315/F79

Statutory Regulations
The Law Library holds annual bound volumes.
Print: L/KH321/N1.
Statutory Regulations are also available online from the Public Access to Legislation Project.

Tables of New Zealand Acts and Ordinances and Statutory Regulations in Force
These contain lists of public, private, local, imperial and provincial statutes in force. The table of public statutes includes reprints and amendments and are printed annually.
Print: L/KH322/N1

The Parliamentary Counsel Office provides a link to tables that lists statutes currently in force.

District Court:
This court has a limited jurisdiction over criminal and civil matters and has a Family Law division.

High Court of New Zealand:
This court has both original and appellate jurisdiction over criminal and civil matters. A single judge usually presides. Appeals are made to the Court of Appeal.

Court of Appeal:
The next court in the New Zealand legal hierarchy is the Court of Appeal. The court has no original jurisdiction. It has a Criminal Appeal Division. The Court is usually presided over by three or more judges. Appeals are heard from both the District Court and High Court of New Zealand.

Supreme Court:
The Supreme Court of New Zealand come into being on 1st January 2004. It is a new court of final appeal and replaces appeals to the Privy Council.

New Zealand Law Reports
These are the official or authorised law report series for New Zealand. This series includes decisions of the Privy Council, the Court of Appeal and the High Court.
Print: L/KH341/N7
Also available on Lexis. Go to: Legal (excluding U.S.) > New Zealand > Case Law > New Zealand Law Reports.

Court of Appeal decisions are also available on AustLII, while the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council publish their decisions online.

District Court Reports
This title covers the decisions of the District Court.
Print: L/KH341/D7
Also available on Lexis. Go to: Legal (excluding U.S.) > New Zealand > Case Law > New Zealand District Court Reports.

The Law Library also holds law report series from New Zealand covering subjects such as family, company and taxation law. Search the Library Resources Database for these titles. Lexis also contains some specialist reports.

See the section below, on Digests, for the Abridgement of New Zealand Case Law.

Abridgement of New Zealand Case Law
This consists of 18 main volumes that are kept up-to-date with several Permanent Supplement volumes. The digest covers decisions of the High Court, Court of Appeal and the Privy Council reported since 1861.

• Volumes 1-16 contains digests of cases arranged alphabetically by subject, for the period 1891-1967


• Volume 17 contains the Consolidated Table of Cases and Index


• Volume 18 contains a Table of Cases for the period, 1861-1873, a Table of Annotated Cases and an annotated listing of Words and Phrases Judicially Considered

Each of the Permanent Supplement volumes update the main volumes by adding new decisions and updating the Tables contained in Volume 18. There are 5 Permanent Supplements to date.
Held in the Digest area at L/KH351/A1.

Butterworths Current Law
Published fortnightly, this publication provides up-to-date information regarding legislation and case law. Digests of cases are arranged by subject. Each issue has subject and case indexes. Cumulative indexes (pink pages) are published quarterly and these cover legislation, cases, subjects and journal articles.
Held in the Digest area at L/KH351/N10. This is also available on Lexis.

CaseBase indexes the New Zealand Law Reports.