Law reform and the Adoption Act 1955: A history of misfortune

The Adoption Act 1955 is now 61 years old and has been passed over for reform on multiple occasions. This paper analyses the failed history of law reform beginning in the year 2000 when a Law Commission Report was issued. This paper identifies why successive attempts by both Labour and National governments failed in reforming adoption over a sixteen year period. Despite multiple attempts at reform, this paper argues that law reform has failed due to a combination of other important governmental priorities, the controversial issues involved in adoption, the ability of the courts to reinterpret the legislation, and the small impact of reform. This paper concludes by using adoption reform as a case study to draw out three main general principles about law reform. The first is the necessity of reform; this paper argues when law reform involves a controversial human rights problem it becomes simultaneously difficult to progress due to political risk, but once that controversy is resolved the reform is no longer considered as necessary. The second is the opportunity to reform; when law reform is seen as less necessary because other agencies are able fix problems within the legislation, other more critical projects will displace a reform project on the hierarchy of political priorities. The third is political interest; the ability to place the responsibility of ‘updating’ the application of legislation onto the courts or another agency results in reduced political interest in reforming that legislation.