Dorsett on the Reform of Equity in New Zealand

We usually don’t post on articles that are in gated journals, but as a former Fulbrighter and recent member of a panel in which Amalia Kessler presented a paper addressing the reform of equity procedure in the antebellum United States, I’m making an exception.  Shaunnagh Dorsett, University of Technology Sydney, Faculty of Law, has posted the following abstract for the article Reforming Equity: New Zealand 1843-1856, which appears in The Journal of Legal History 34 (2013): 285:

This article considers the significant modifications made to English Chancery procedure by the first rules of court of the Supreme Court of New Zealand (1843/44). In the first part of the nineteenth century, across the empire, colonial judges used their power to draft their own rules to modify English practice and procedure, often implementing changes ahead of those of the English reform movement. The first rules of court in New Zealand were particularly innovative: they introduced new, simplified and uniform rules for actions and suits, as well as achieving a level of administrative 'fusion' well before the reforms either of the New York Field Code 1849 or the English Judicature Act 1873.