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Habeas Corpus Act 2001

5: Purposes

You could also call this:

"What the Habeas Corpus Act 2001 is trying to achieve to keep you safe and free."

Illustration for Habeas Corpus Act 2001

The purposes of the Habeas Corpus Act 2001 are to help keep you safe and free. This Act wants to make sure you are not held against your will without a good reason. It does this by making it easier for people to ask the High Court for help if they think someone is being held unfairly.

This Act also helps people who are not happy with the decision made by the High Court. It gives them the right to appeal to the Court of Appeal. The Act also gets rid of some old types of writs of habeas corpus, except for one called the writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum.

The Act is trying to protect your individual liberty, which is an important right. It does this by making sure there is a good process in place for dealing with cases where someone thinks they are being held unfairly. This process helps keep you safe and makes sure you are treated fairly.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM91778.

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"The government and Parliament must follow this law, but Parliament still has its own rules and powers."

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"Challenging unfair detention: asking a court to check if someone is being held lawfully"

5Purposes

  1. The purposes of this Act are—

  2. to reaffirm the historic and constitutional purpose of the writ of habeas corpus as a vital means of safeguarding individual liberty:
    1. to make better provision for restoring the liberty of persons unlawfully detained by establishing an effective procedure for applications to the High Court for the issue of a writ of habeas corpus, and the expeditious determination of those applications:
      1. to provide certain unsuccessful parties in habeas corpus proceedings with a right of appeal to the Court of Appeal:
        1. to abolish writs of habeas corpus other than the writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum.