ABSTRACT
New Zealand has served as a laboratory for all manner of judicial and legislative experiments. That country proves to have been in the van in the matter of name suppression, too. Section 138 of the Criminal Justice Act 1985, for instance, abrogates all inherent common law powers and sets out plainly the circumstances when a court may be cleared or the reporting of judicial proceedings forbidden. Section 140 is drafted in very general terms and allows name suppression not only for the defendant but also for "any other person connected with the proceedings." Section 140 gives no indication as to when a judge should order name suppression. The resultant "very broad discretion" has left the courts considerable leeway. Whereas we have seen that judges are moved to order name suppression if there is a risk of job loss, mere financial loss in the conduct of a defendant's business seems not to suffice.
