There is a variety of ways to access judgments of the courts.
Judgments of particular public interest issued by the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal and High Court are updated regularly and can be accessed below on each court's page tile. These judgments remain here for 90 days after delivery.
All Supreme Court judgments and more detailed information about cases coming before it, including synopses of live cases, summaries of cases that have been determined, and information about reserved decisions can be found under the Supreme Court section of this website.
The Ministry of Justice maintains Judicial Decisions Online, a searchable database of court judgments. Most senior courts judgments are published to the database. It includes judgments from:
- The Supreme Court (all)
- The Court of Appeal (cases from 2003)
- The High Court (cases from 2005)
New Zealand’s District Courts deal with approximately 200,000 criminal, family, youth and civil matters each year. Decisions from a representative sample of these cases, with emphasis on significant decisions of particular interest, can be found on the District Court website.
The Ministry also has a decisions finder where most of the Special Jurisdictions decisions can be accessed.
Historical decisions of the courts and other legal materials are available on a database maintained by the New Zealand Legal Information Institute.
A mailing list for alerts about the online publication of judgments of public interest of the Supreme Court, and Court of Appeal and High Court is available. This is a two-tiered subscription system: each list you subscribe to will trigger a separate confirmation request about your subscription to the list.
