The Permanent Court of Appeal : Surveying the 50 Years

This article was written to mark 50 years since the New Zealand Court of Appeal was constituted with permanent full-time appellate judges. The first section of the paper discusses the events leading up to the establishment of the Court. It then notes some major historical events in the life of the Court. Next, two snapshots of the Court are provided through documents from 1980 and 1996 showing the comparative workload, resources and functioning of the Court. The following section of the article contains a statistical analysis of decisions of the Court over the 50 years. Finally, the article looks at a number of significant decisions from each decade and comments on the relationship between the Court of Appeal and first the Privy Council and later the Supreme Court