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The New Zealand Cabinet Manual is regarded as an authoritative guide to the conduct of the executive in that country, and it is now a public document accessible online. A similar Manual has been adopted in the UK, but these documents raise questions about the consequences of creating an authoritative written version of constitutional convention. For instance, could a Cabinet Manual prevent constitutional change or lead to biased understandings of conventions? Could the content of a Cabinet Manual have a decisive effect on judicial review? The present article examines the experience surrounding the New Zealand Cabinet Manual in order to address some of the critical questions that parliamentarians and academics have raised about the possible effects of such documents upon constitutional conventions. While the New Zealand Cabinet Manual is supposed not to affect constitutional convention, it has nonetheless helped to shape it.
