Costs in Criminal Cases: Ridiculously Ultra Vires?

The decision in Carruthers v Otago Regional Council is the latest to highlight the deficiencies in the New Zealand Costs in Criminal Cases Regulations 1987. This paper makes the case that the Government needs to revise the Regulations as soon as possible to reduce their unfairness, injustice, and ridiculousness

Redefining Reasonableness

(Un)reasonableness as a ground of judicial review has long been the fly in the administrative law ointment. This paper considers the problems unreasonableness poses to the coherence and simplicity of administrative law, with particular reference to New Zealand case law

Judicial Review of Scientific Findings

The High Court decision in New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust v National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research is a rare example of judicial examination of scientific research undertaken by publicly-owned bodies, but also represents a potentially worrying precedent. In this paper, the author discusses the importance of judicial review remedies to those wronged by the adverse effects of public decision making

Gambling Machines and Accounting

This paper considers the importance of recognised accounting standards in statutory interpretation, even in the highly-specialised gaming industry. The paper discusses the treatment of gaming machines for accounting purposes in New Zealand, with a particular focus on the decision in Pub Charity v Department of Internal Affairs

Judicial Review of Charitable Trusts

This paper considers the successful application for judicial review in Great Christchurch Buildings Trust v Church Property Trustees and the worrying effects of this decision upon New Zealand law. The paper concludes that, in holding that sufficient public interest will justify circumvention of normal legal requirements, the Court has put all charitable trusts at risk

New Zealand: The State of Liberal Democracy

This article is a brief report on constitutional developments and cases in New Zealand in 2017. The authors discuss several topics including the operation of New Zealand’s Mixed-Member Proportional voting system, New Zealand’s constitutional commitment to liberal democracy, and the issue of prisoner voting

Judicial Innovation Under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act: Lessons for Queensland?

In 2016, the Legal Affairs and Community Safety Committee of Queensland Parliament issued a report on its ‘Inquiry into a possible Human Rights Act for Queensland.’ In the course of deliberations over this document, the Committee looked at the operation of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (‘NZBORA’). The purpose of this article is to provide for a Queensland audience an account of the NZBORA’s central features, how these came to be, what the instrument was thought likely to do, and the way that the judiciary has applied it since first entering into force

Judicial Innovation Under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act: Lessons for Queensland?

In 2016, the Legal Affairs and Community Safety Committee of Queensland Parliament issued a report on its ‘Inquiry into a possible Human Rights Act for Queensland.’ In the course of deliberations over this document, the Committee looked at the operation of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (‘NZBORA’). The purpose of this article is to provide for a Queensland audience an account of the NZBORA’s central features, how these came to be, what the instrument was thought likely to do, and the way that the judiciary has applied it since first entering into force

Bulk micromegas detectors for large TPC applications

A large volume TPC will be used in the near future in a variety of experiments including T2K. The bulk Micromegas detector for this TPC is built using a novel production technique particularly suited for compact and robust low mass detectors. The capability to pave a large surface with a simple mounting solution and small dead space between modules is of particular interest for these applications. We have built several large bulk Micromegas detectors (27 x 26 cm2) and we have tested them in the former HARP field cage setup with a magnetic field. Cosmic ray data have been acquired in a variety of experimental conditions. Good detector performances and space point resolution have been achieved

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13