Worth Richard: New Zealand Council of Law Reporting Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Worth Richard: New Zealand Council of Law Reporting Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:630;Page:2476] 
Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) 
: 
 We have indeed been fortunate tonight to hear contributions in a substantial and an insightful way in connection with the New Zealand Council of Law Reporting Amendment Bill and useful references to the Land Valuation Tribunal have been made by the previous speaker. I echo the comment made by Mark Blumsky that one of the issues touching law reporting is the delay between the delivery of the judgment in the relevant court and the publication of that judgment. That has spawned a number of specialist reports in which the standard of reporting is often quite uneven. 
Other speakers have spoken about what this legislation does and they have also made the point that the Government Administration Committee did not feel unduly burdened by this bill so was able to deal with it both robustly and quickly. That is of little wonder because of course none of the members on the committee have legal qualifications. I believe it wrong in principle that legislation with a high level of legal content should be considered by committees such as the Government Administration Committee which have subject areas of expertise far removed from such legislation. 
 One of the issues that arises with legislation of this type is the question of why we should have law reports and Kate Wilkinson touched on that issue very briefly in her comments. It is all to do with a Law 101 doctrine called the rule of stare decisis. In common law countries such as New Zealand Canada Australia and the United Kingdom court opinions are legally binding under that rule. It is a Latin code phrase for the doctrine of precedent—that is courts within a hierarchy will follow decisions made higher up in that hierarchy and those decisions are binding on them. That is why the publication of such opinions is important: it is so that everyone—lawyers judges laymen and the media—can find out what the law is as declared by the judges. 
I would like to follow a different line from earlier speakers and just for a moment talk about some aspects of history and comparison in order to put the New Zealand Council of Law Reporting in context. Of course this bill of 2006 is amending provisions in old legislation going back to 1938. There is not much law on the stocks dating from 1938 so it is right to say it is old legislation. If we look at what is going on as a matter of history in other countries then this legislation is patterned very much on that of the United Kingdom. 
In England reports were initially compiled in a rather haphazard fashion by private entrepreneurs. The situation was not helped by the tradition among English judges of delivering opinions orally and of not distributing written copies. So the quality of the reports usually depended on the shorthand skills of whoever was taking notes. That is why it became an issue for those who followed those matters to form judgments on the merit of a particular set of private reports by reference to the quality of those who were tasked to sit in court and record the comments as they fell from the judge’s breast. So what happened in the United Kingdom in 1865 was that the non-profit Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales was founded and in the United Kingdom it has certainly become the dominant publisher of reports. It has compiled most of the best available copies of pre-1866 cases into the  
English Reports 
. When lawyers cite cases in court the issue for them today is still that judges prefer particular reports over others. 
In the United States a similarly chaotic situation prevailed up to the mid-19th century when the United States Supreme Court and many states of the United States began to publish official reports. 
Clauses 1 to 3 agreed to. 
Bill to be reported without amendment presently. 
House resumed. 
The Chairperson reported the Judicature Amendment Bill (No 3) with amendment and the New Zealand Council of Law Reporting Amendment Bill without amendment. 
Report adopted.