Courts, tribunals and National Office will be closed from Friday 3 April to Monday 6 April for Easter weekend.
New Zealanders are warned of scam text messages currently circulating that claim to be from the Ministry of Justice about overdue traffic fines. The Ministry does not include any links in our texts. Read more about Texts from Ministry of Justice
The index measures 8 factors: constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, an open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice, and criminal justice.
New Zealand is ranked ahead of Canada (9), Australia (10), the United Kingdom (11) and the United States (19), and has the highest ranking for the East-Asia/Pacific Region.
The top performer in the 2017-2018 Rule of Law Index was Denmark, with a score of 0.89. New Zealand scored 0.83, the same in the previous survey. Venezuela was lowest with a score of 0.29.
Two factors where New Zealand improved were ‘Regulatory Enforcement’ in which we rose from 8th in the world to 6th, and the ‘Civil Justice’, which rose from 11th to 8th.
The index is based on surveys of 110,000 households and 3,000 experts worldwide.
