PacLII - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

The Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute (PacLII), in partnership with the University of the South Pacific School of Law, promotes free access to South Pacific laws and material (case law, legislation, treaties, Law Reform Commission documents, etc.) via the Internet. AustLII (Australian Legal Information Institute) assists PacLII in mark-up processing, database structure, search engine facilities, and some other aspects of technical infrastructure.

How up to date are PacLII’s databases?

Case law databases

The last update for case law databases can be established by looking for the 'Most recent decision' line at the top of each database main page. Click on the following link to see an example for the Vanuatu Supreme Court.

Legislation databases

In each database, sessional legislation has a chronological index by year and in this way it is possible to check the latest legislation. Consolidated legislation is current as at the consolidation publication date.

Also note that PacLII's last update date displayed on the main page of each legislation database is the date on which PacLII last updated the database. Click on the following link to see an example for Vanuatu Sessional Legislation.

PacLII does not add annotations, comments or change the content of any legislation. To check for the most recent amendments or most up-to-date currency details for any piece of legislation online, you will need to confirm details with the official body of the country that is responsible for the legislation.

How do you choose the cases which will be reported?

PacLII does not choose which cases will be reported. The courts/tribunals etc. determine which cases should be published by PacLII. PacLII does not make these decisions and will publish any legal material received from the official originating bodies.

What are the means in which you are kept informed of new legal information such as Acts, amendments, regulations, recent judgments, etc.?

PacLII has contacts within the courts and governments in the region who supply cases and legislation as they are released in print and electronic format. Print copies are scanned and edited for publication on our website. We work closely with the University of the South Pacific Law School Library to achieve this. It is important to be aware that some Courts and Legislatures are quicker than others at supplying the cases and legislation for varying reasons.

When will missing materials be added to PacLII?

PacLII is moving forward quickly however there are still many legal materials that are yet to be placed on the database. Progress can be affected, for example, by: (i) intermittent supply of materials by jurisdictions (ii) a backlog of paper materials which need to be scanned, formatted and proofed; (iii) poor quality paper copies which require verification with the originating jurisdiction.
As soon as new electronic materials are received from the relevant offices, however, they are placed on PacLII.

How can I obtain a judgment or Act which is not currently available on PacLII?

If PacLII does not have a case you need and it is within the scope of jurisdiction, please feel free to contact PacLII through the Feedback Form and we will endeavor to obtain a copy to publish on the website.

Can I obtain PacLII databases on CD-ROM/DVD-ROM?

PacLII will provide a limited number of free CD-ROM/DVD-ROMs to public legal and judicial bodies covered under PacLII jurisdictions. Unfortunately, PacLII has neither the staff nor the funding to be able to offer this service to others.
To request a CD-ROM/DVD-ROM, please leave your name and organization along with a note requesting these materials on the PacLII Feedback Page.

Will you mail me a paper copy of a piece of legislation or decision?

Unfortunately, we cannot do this as PacLII has neither the staff nor the funding to be able to offer this service. Please print your own copy of these materials from the downloadable or online copies which we make available on the website.

How do I cite cases which use medium neutral citations?

See Citations page for information about citing cases on PacLII.

The publication of a certain case is a breach of my privacy. Will you remove it?

PacLII is committed to ensuring that reported case law on its website respects the delicate balance between the privacy interests of persons in appropriate cases, and the need to ensure the openness of the judicial system, judicial independence, maintaining public confidence in the justice systems through fair, consistent, and accurate reporting of judgments, and compliance with all bans on publication and any other legal requirements related to the non-disclosure of information.

PacLII publishes cases as supplied by the courts in the South Pacific region and is only one of the mechanisms by which courts and tribunals publish their decisions. Many cases are also reported in a number of paper-based series of law reports.

If you would like a judgment removed from PacLII, please contact the originating court for permission to do so. If the court agrees with your request, ask them to contact PacLII with official instructions for removal.

Please see our Privacy Policy for more information.

Can I reproduce PacLII materials?

This depends on the type of material, and the method of reproduction. PacLII is proudly a "free to air" service, but nonetheless our detailed markup is subject to copyright and cannot be copied for commercial purposes. The markup is absolutely not in the public domain as far as any sort of commercial reproduction is concerned. Other value added material produced by PACLII may also be subject to copyright, and not freely available.
Additionally, most Courts, Tribunals, Governments and other bodies claim copyright on their decisions, legislation and other materials. PacLII publishes these materials on its website with the permission of the relevant copyright holder(s). To reproduce these materials, you should seek permission from the relevant copyright holder(s). PacLII cannot give you permission to reproduce such materials.

For more information you should contact PacLII feedback about the specific PacLII materials which you want to reproduce. You can also consult our Copyright page.

How can I contact somebody from PacLII?

Searching PacLII

Searching

For more detailed information about finding Acts and Regulations, consult the Legislation Help page.

For more information about finding Case Law, consult the Case Law Help page.

How do I use the Search function?

You can either search from the top of PacLII's home page using a simple search or the Full Search Form for a more advanced search. PacLII Search Help page provides more information.

The Search Help page will also provide you with a link to the full Boolean Operator chart used with PacLII’s SINO search engine.

Why isn't search working properly?

Firstly, remember that the SINO search engine uses a common words list, for example, a, and, by. These words will not be picked up in a search. The current list of common words is available at the SINO common words page.

If, however, this is not the problem, or there is a technical error in the search results page, please let PacLII know via the PacLII Report an Error page.

Does PacLII provide an alert service informing users of new additions to the site?

As present we do not provide an alerting service. People are encouraged to check the PacLII website frequently. PacLII also posts all new additions, grouped by jurisdictions, on the home page in the section “News & Additions”.

Does PacLII provide research services?

Cases, legislation and any other documents on PacLII can be downloaded free of charge. However, if you require research assistance, PacLII is able to provide commercial organisations with research services. Our resources include information on PacLII, Pacific Island legal material held in the Law School Library and overseas subscription databases. Costs for these services depend upon the type of request. Please contact PacLII through the Feedback Page in order to inquire further about these services.

PITS

What is the Pacific Island Treaties Series (PITS)

The Pacific Islands Treaty Series, otherwise affectionately known as "PITS", aims to be a comprehensive treaty database for the Pacific Islands region publishing bilateral and multilateral treaties which Pacific Island states have entered into amongst themselves, as well as with nations and organisations external to the region. In addition, some treaties are included in the PITS database if they are relevant to the Pacific Island states and territories that are the focus of the PITS site even if they do not have any Pacific Island state parties.
The PITS website publishes full text treaties, and if possible, their corresponding status reports. These status reports, where possible, list the domesticating legislation that gives effect to the treaties at national or domestic level. The domesticating legislation is an extended feature unique to the PITS database which inter alia indicates the commitment of the Pacific Island states to their rights and obligations at international law.

What is a Treaty?

A treaty, for the purposes of the PITS, is any instrument of agreement that falls within the definition of a Treaty under the Vienna Convention Art. 2 (1) (a), being “an international agreement concluded between States in written form and governed by international law, whether embodied in a single instrument or in two or more related instruments and whatever its particular designation.” ( Vienna Convention Art. 2 (1) (a)).

Common designations include conventions, agreements, agreement by exchange of notes, memorandum of understanding as well as charters, codes, framework conventions, outline convention etc. All these legal instruments are represented in the Pacific Islands Treaty Series.

What is a PITS treaty?

The PITS database however is narrowed down to only include the bilateral and multilateral treaties pertaining to the 22 Pacific Island countries and territories listed above. A treaty is included in the Pacific Islands Treaty Series because of three possible reasons:

Why is the PITS database not up to date?

Unfortunately, since April 2009, these databases have not been regularly updated due to Editor for the Pacific Islands Treaty Series Editor's departure. Staff shortages at PacLII have meant that this database is currently on hold.

Helpful Information concerning PITS

In addition there are also helpful information pages on the site such as the Glossary for definitions of treaty terms for the purposes of the PITS, Country Information on the political status history of Pacific Island countries and territories, Information on Treaty Making and Domestication Practices of the Pacific Island States and territories, Links to other useful treaty sites as well as a Help Page which gives a basic yet easy guide on how to navigate the PITS website.

Technical Questions

Internet Explorer crashes when I try to print something from PacLII.

Microsoft Internet Explorer version 4 is known to crash when trying to print a document with a long title. The only real solution is to upgrade to the latest version of IE. You can get it for free from Microsoft.

A temporary workaround is to save the file to disk and load it into a capable word processor such as Microsoft Word. You can then print the document from there with no problem.

I am concerned about my access being logged. Do you do this?

Yes. We log access for a number of reasons, including research, development, security, maintenance and for statistics generation. We currently log accesses using a slightly enhanced version of the Common Logfile format which produces logs similar to the following:

144.120.17.102 - - [29/Aug/2006:07:59:09 +1100] "GET /vu/cases/VUMC/1996/1.html HTTP/1.1" 200 37354 "http://www.paclii.org/vu/cases/VUMC/1996/" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"

This information includes details on your host address, time of access, exact request, response status code, size of data transmitted, HTTP referer (where you were last), browser version and operating system. This information is never publicly released by PacLII, and is only used for research subject to privacy guarantees. See the PacLII Privacy Policy for full details of the privacy guarantees.

I have found a broken link

Broken links (ie links which produce a file not found message) can usually be fixed and should be reported to PacLII Report an Error page, with details of the URL of the page where the link is located and what you expected to find.

Note that we cannot fix broken links which are not located on our web site. If the broken link is on another web site, please contact that website's webmaster and not PacLII.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

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