Children have unique physical, psychological, mental and emotional characteristics which make them especially vulnerable. This paper considers the capacity for children to consent to participate in research, and the ...

The assessment of legislative frameworks in this report is based on principles which are most likely to enable regulatory initiatives to be accepted by the general public as legitimate. These principles require that the ...

On death there is an inevitable tension in succession law between property and family, between testamentary freedom and the deceased’s duty to provide for family members. This paper considers the relationship property ...

Genetic testing raises new issues from those involved in other medical contexts, particularly for children. Most of the concerns relevant to minors are prompted by the familial and predictive aspects of genetic information. It ...

The review of the psychosocial effects of newborn genetic susceptibility testing has highlighted the fact that there are several good reasons to be concerned about such testing. These include features inherent in the newborn ...

Array comparative genomic hybridisation (aCGH) represents a major advance in the field of cytogenetics and offers tremendous promise in prenatal diagnosis for the detection of genetic alterations leading to serious genetic ...

In New Zealand the choice by intending parents to use reproductive technology is limited by legislation. This default restriction on the prospective parents’ procreative autonomy applies unless the use of the assisted ...

The New Zealand Court of Appeal has rejected evidence of neuroimaging to help juries assess the capacity of the accused in an insanity plea. This chapter says the Court of Appeal was right to do so because neuroimaging ...

The significance and complexities of both international child abduction and intercountry adoption led to the creation of two Hague Conventions. This chapter analyses the policy challenges facing the international aspects ...

Both in New Zealand and abroad, a social trend is emerging of grandparents taking on the responsibility of parenting their grandchildren. This chapter examines the different ways in which grandparents can come to be legally ...