Access to justice for New Zealand health consumers

New Zealand has evolved a just, sensible and balanced system for addressing adverse medical events. This article considers potential changes to enhance justice for health consumers after an adverse event. Patient motivations for claiming are described. Changes to the complaints regime are considered with the aim of opening up access to the Human Rights Review Tribunal. Modest change only is advocated, to avoid the potential for the tribunal to become a de facto appeal mechanism. The preferable solution is greater access to Health and Disability Commissioner investigations. The second part of the article considers changes, some implemented already, to the compensation regime to make it more affordable. These will compromise the ability of the scheme to address the remedial interest of injured patients in compensation. Undesirable consequences are likely to occur across the system. Policy-makers need to consider the ramifications of change for the system as a whole.     

A Commentary on the New Zealand Supreme Court Rules

This article critically assesses how some public law principles, including the doctrine of legitimate expectations, are applied in the Commonwealth Caribbean. It proceeds to discuss the impact of international law on public law and to note that, through the implementation of unincorporated treaties into domestic law, the principle of dualism is increasingly losing its significance and protective effect. The consequence of this is that Governments will continue to want more opt outs and will be more cautious about signing treaties which they are not ready to implement.     

The Law Commission Consultative Report on Company Security Interests: An Irreverent Riposte

I was once at a sermon by a well-known Northern Ireland politician and minister of religion in which, talking about the fall from grace of a British minister following a sex scandal, he commented that while the will of God worked slowly it also worked surely. Be that as it may, one might comment that the process of law reform, whatever about working surely, can certainly work slowly. Back in July 2002 the Law Commission produced with some haste a consultation paper on Registration of Security Interests . ¹ There was a bit of a fanfare, a short consultation period and talk of imminent legislative change. Things went quiet for a while. More than 2 years later the Law Commission came back in September 2004 with a further consultation paper only this time called a "consultative report" ² with the promise of a Final Report in July 2005. In this article I will look at the consultative report and ask whether it is going to be the harbinger of legislative transformation.     

Report of the Law Reform Commission of Tanzania on Congestion in Prisons

Since its formal inauguration in the year 2006, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) has arguably shown itself to be quite capable of effectively dispensing with its overarching aims of consistency, coherence and legal certainty in the process of adjudication. Indeed, through the adoption of a teleological approach to the construction of the Revised Treaty of Chaguramas, the CCJ has positioned itself as a major operational component in the new Caribbean legal order, serving, as the European Court of Justice as well as several domestic courts have done, to ensure transparency and accountability. The court’s relatively nuanced purpose-driven approach has arguably been the single biggest contributing factor to the region’s quickly evolving ‘indigenous jurisprudence’. Nevertheless, some of the court’s most recent original jurisdiction decisions reveal a growing trend towards judicial restraint. The varying degrees to which the CCJ has adopted a teleological approach to the interpretation of the Revised Treaty of Chaguramas, the concomitant effects of this important development as well as the challenges which invariably arise in this connection are the subject of this article.     

The National Crime Commission Report

In 1965 President Johnson established The Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. Its report released earlier this year is highly significant. The recommendations concerning juvenile courts are likely to have strong influence over the next several years and that section of the report follows:     

New Zealand: Public Registers Report

In September 2007, the Commonwealth Law Bulletin (Vol. 33, No. 3), published an article on the New Zealand Law Commission’s Issues Paper on Public Registers (IP 3, 2007), including the four options for reform that the Commission was putting forward for consideration by interested persons.

The Law Commission’s Public Registers Report ¹ 1 New Zealand Law Commission’s Public Registers Report, NZLC R 101 2008. (the Report) has now been published, completing stage 2 of the Law Commission’s four stage Privacy Review.

It is available on the Law Commission’s website at http://www.lawcom.govt.nz.     

裁判文书网上公开中的隐私问题研究

随着法院信息化建设的推进,裁判文书的公开方式呈现出从纸质到网络的发展趋势。加大了隐私扩散风险。针对法院是否应在网上公开裁判文书及公开的程度等问题,存在着三种观点：禁止说、区别说及同等说。为平衡公众知情权与个人隐私之间的冲突,对裁判文书中记载的敏感的个人信息或有损声誉的事实,需依据裁判文书公开的目的,决定是否将之公开在网上。同时,法院也应采取积极措施应对公众对隐私问题的关注,同等对待纸质公开和网上公开。