Tuvalu legal data from official sources, structured for AI and legaltech.

Tuvalu is a common-law jurisdiction and a Commonwealth realm in the Pacific, independent since 1 October 1978 after separating from the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony. Its legal system is based on English common law, applied alongside recognised customary law, under the Constitution of Tuvalu — adopted at independence, comprehensively revised in 1986, and reissued in a revised text in 2023. Acts are passed by the unicameral Parliament of Tuvalu (Palamene o Tuvalu) and published in the Tuvalu Government Gazette, while the consolidated Laws of Tuvalu are maintained by the Office of the Attorney-General, with public copies via the Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute (PacLII). The judiciary runs from the magistrates', island, and lands courts through the High Court of Tuvalu to the Court of Appeal. Laws are published in English, alongside Tuvaluan.

Tuvalu's legal framework has seen significant recent change: the 2023 revised Constitution restructured constitutional provisions and, notably, affirmed the continuity of Tuvalu's statehood and maritime boundaries in the face of sea-level rise. Because reforms like these can shift the constitutional baseline, citations to superseded provisions can simply be wrong — point-in-time data straight from the source is what keeps a Tuvalu legal research answer correct today.