skills/cite-check/references/authority-sources/new-zealand.md

# New Zealand authority sources

Use this page to acquire readable New Zealand authorities for `/cite-check`. Search public services with citation metadata only. Never send a confidential brief, excerpt, record, or matter facts to a public service merely to find an authority.

## Case law

- The official [Courts of New Zealand judgments page](https://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/judgments) publishes selected judgments of public interest and links to court-specific PDF decisions. It says those public-interest judgments remain on that page for 90 days, so the page is not a durable complete collection.
- The same official page routes older and broader senior-court research to the Ministry of Justice's [Judicial Decisions Online](https://jdo.justice.govt.nz/), described as a searchable database covering all Supreme Court decisions, Court of Appeal decisions from 2003, and High Court decisions from 2005, subject to suppression and stated exclusions. If the search interface is inaccessible, ask the lawyer to retrieve the PDF or supply the complete judgment.
- The official Courts and District Courts sites link to [NZLII](https://www.nzlii.org/) for historical decisions and other legal materials. Treat NZLII as supplementary. Its `robots.txt` was reviewed, but current terms and model-mediated reuse permission were not verified. Check its current access and reuse terms, do not assume automated access is permitted, and confirm the judgment's identity and readable text before relying on it.

## Legislation and regulations

Use the official [New Zealand Legislation](https://www.legislation.govt.nz/) portal for Acts, regulations, and court rules. Preserve the exact Act or regulation identifier, version or historical date, section, official URL, and retrieval date. A `latest` consolidation does not establish what the law said at an earlier time; obtain the applicable historical version when timing matters.

## Case-specific materials

The Courts' official [Access to court information](https://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/going-to-court/media/finding-out-about-a-case) page distinguishes documents available as of right from documents requiring court permission and links the governing access rules and request form. Use that process or the matter workspace for pleadings, affidavits, briefs, transcripts, orders, and other record documents. Check suppression, bail, privacy, confidentiality, privilege, and any conditions imposed by the registrar or court.

## Preserve the evidence boundary

Do not assume complete coverage. A search result, case summary, RSS entry, or database listing does not establish currentness, later treatment, or the proposition attributed to a case. Preserve the citation metadata, court, date, source URL, retrieval date, complete readable judgment, and pinpoint. Add the file to the supplied authority set before checking what it says.