Public and Administrative Law (Books and Journals)
- Canterbury Law Review From No. 19-2013, January 2013 to No. 28-2021, January 2021
- A Long Time Coming: The Story of Ng'i Tahu's Treaty Settlement Negotiations with the Crown, by Martin Fisher
- Contribution between Wrongdoers - Is the Damage Sufficiently Related?
-
Protecting Clients' Money - the Road to the Solvency and Experience Requirements of the Law Practitioners Act 1955
This article explores two largely unexplored aspects of the history of the New Zealand legal profession: the generally ignored but very substantial cohort of lawyers who caused financial losses to their clients and other creditors by bankruptcy or theft - or both - and the slow developments of rules designed to limit that loss-causing behaviour. It is argued that the legal profession was...
-
Surrogacy During COVID-19 Times: The New Zealand Experience
On 28 February 2020 the first case of Covid-19 was reported in New Zealand. Within a month, the New Zealand borders were closed to non-citizens and residents. Other jurisdictions also took this step, making international travel difficult, if not impossible. For intended parents who had entered into international surrogacy arrangements, this presented a significant problem: they needed to travel...
-
James Hardie and the Development of Parent Company Liability: New Zealand as a Forum for Transnational Human Rights Litigation?
Recent jurisprudence in the United Kingdom and Canada has recognised the possible liability of parent companies for the tortious activity of their subsidiaries domiciled in foreign jurisdictions. “Parent company liability” is thus becoming a litigious avenue through which victims might seek effective legal redress for corporate human rights abuses. In 2019, the New Zealand Court of Appeal (NZCA)...
-
Mind Over Matter: A Case for Reforming New Zealand's Accident Compensation Law Concerning Work-Related Psychological Injury
Workers in post-industrial societies increasingly occupy jobs with greater risks of psychological injury than physical harm. At the same time, a growing body of research is recognising the untenability of treating psychological injury with less importance than physical harm. In response, Australia's workers' compensation law has evolved to serve this changing landscape by affording comprehensive...
-
An Overview of the Trusts Act 2019 - Revolutionary Changes or Much of the Same?
The Trusts Act 2019 (the Act) is now fully in force. The Act repeals and replaces the former Trustee Act 1956. The Act has modernised the law of trusts and made the law more accessible. It restates many common law principles as well as modifying some of the pre- Act common law. Few provisions depart entirely from the former Trustee Act 1956 and the common law applicable prior to the Act. These...
-
An Analysis of the United States' Stance on BEPS: Pillar One
The current reformation of the traditional nexus and profit allocation tax principles by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development comes as a welcome relief for the majority of global economies, who lose billions worth of tax revenue through their inapplicability to the modern, digital economy. However, recent actions by the United States threaten to stall any meaningful progress
- Editorial: Voices of the Pacific in a Globalised World
-
Securing the Pacific in a Globalised World: New and Emerging Developments in International Law
The United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and two other proposed international laws currently under development through United Nations processes – to regulate the activities of corporations and business enterprises, and to govern the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction – hold enormous significance for...
-
Regional Disaster Risk Reduction: Is there a Pacific Way?
The 2015 Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction has re-affirmed the global importance of DRR in the early years of the 21st century. Alongside a global recognition of its importance, regional approaches to DRR have now become commonplace. This article examines this phenomenon in a South Pacific context and critically analyses the limited regional framework that currently exists. In common...
-
Building on the Past: China's Evolving Presence in Samoa
Over the past decade, China has increasingly attracted attention from commentators for being an 'emerging' and controversial partner in the Pacific region challenging the status quo. Despite this narrative, China has had deep-rooted connections throughout many parts of the Pacific, including Samoa. Throughout the last century, a number of external laws and policies have played a part in enabling...
-
Land Tenure in Solomon Islands: Past, Present and Future
Since the arrival of foreigners in Solomon Islands the most perplexing question has been how to balance land as a spiritual and social ideal with land as an economic base. Law reformers have struggled with the competing aims of retaining land under customary tenure, whilst offering sufficient certainty for it to be used for purposes other than subsistence gardening and small locally owned...
-
Koe Tu'i Ko E Pule, The King is Sovereign: An Analysis of the 2017 Dissolution of the Tongan Parliament
The Kingdom of Tonga is the only country in the Pacific never to have been colonised. Its constitutional development thus provides a unique model of customary Pacific governance in the modern world context. On 25 August 2017, the King of Tonga dissolved Parliament. The impetus was said to be due to issues with Prime Minister Akilisi Pohiva. Elections held three months later resulted in the re-elec
-
We Are Voyagers!' Building a Pacific Critical Legal Theory for a New Voyage to Freedom
The many complex inequities that Pacific peoples around the world face today call for a new voyage to new places of freedom from subordination by the law. In response to this call, I propose for Pacific peoples to start building a critical theory of our own – a Pacific Critical Legal Theory (PacCrit for short) – to then help us design and build the vaka (canoes) that we will need for this new...
-
The 'Letter' and the 'Spirit' of Comparative Law in the Time of 'Artificial Intelligence' and other Oxymora
Comparative law is, paradoxically, both driven by and a driver of constant change. Over time, it has been described as an "enigma", an "essentially contested concept", and has repeatedly been pronounced "dead", but it has never ceased to provide important inspiration for the understanding of the role of law, in terms of legal education, theory and practice. Today, the constructive contribution of
-
Redefining Legal Responsibility for Pure Economic Loss in the Innovation Economy
This paper proposes a new standard for determining legal responsibility in the law of negligence, but particularly pure economic loss cases across Commonwealth jurisdictions. The paper argues that the prevailing standards for determining pure economic loss do not measure up to the novel legal challenges and promises thrown up by the innovation economy. This paper argues that courts should always...
-
The Celebrity's Right to Autonomous Self-Definition and False Endorsements: Arguing the Case for a Right of Publicity in the Philippines
With the Philippines being the top country in terms of social media usage, social media platforms have expanded opportunities for celebrities to profit from their fame. Despite the pervasiveness of celebrity culture in the country and the increasing number of unauthorised celebrity advertisements in such platforms, the right of publicity does not explicitly exist in Philippine law. This paper...
-
Valuing Freedom: An Analysis of Parents' Freedom of Choice to Work and Care under New Zealand's Childcare-Related Family Policies using the Capability Approach
In the past, New Zealand's financially-focused childcare-related family policies have been evaluated through feminist equality models such as equality-as-sameness, equality-as-differences and dual-earner carer frameworks. Nonetheless, none of these models alone is fully representative. This article takes a different approach by focusing on people's freedom of choice based on Sen's capability...
-
From Walking the Tight Rope to a Walk on the Bridge: The Lessons from the United States Supreme Court Decision in Spokeo Inc v Robins
This paper will discuss lessons for New Zealand data privacy law from the United States Supreme Court decision in Spokeo Inc v Robins. This paper will explore the policy context surrounding data aggregators. It will present the case for a regulatory approach and question the effectiveness of the status quo in addressing harms posed by data aggregators. This paper champions a regulatory model...
-
When is a Subsidiary's Negligence the Parent Company's Problem?
Recognising a duty of care on a parent company for the acts or omissions of its subsidiary poses the difficult issue of accommodating principles of limited liability and separate corporate personality within the paradigm of traditional tort principles. These difficulties mean the law is unsettled. Recent New Zealand and United Kingdom appellate decisions challenge both the conceptual basis for...
-
A Dream of Dignity: Migrant Sex Workers' Rights to Work and Freedom from Forced Labour in New Zealand
While international human rights law recognises the inherent dignity of human beings, full expression of human dignity is reliant on the realisation of human rights. This article considers how the current realisation of migrant sex workers' rights to work and freedom from forced labour impacts these workers' dignity in New Zealand. It identifies that the general vulnerability of migrants'...
- Rape Myths as Barriers to Fair Trial Process: Comparing adult rape trials with those in the Aotearoa Sexual Violence Court Pilot. By Elisabeth McDonald
- Foreword - Special Edition: Legal And Social Change - Gradual Evolution or Punctuated Equilibrium?
-
Re-thinking individualisation: M'ori land development policy and the law in the age of Ngata (1920-1940)
This article focuses on Sir Āpirana Ngata as Minister of Native Affairs and his programme for Māori land development, which was underpinned by legislation enacted in 1929. The legislation is considered fully, as is the development programme itself. The thesis of the article is that the development programme was of pivotal significance, historically and legally, and that it needs to be understood...
-
Assuredly there never was murder more foul and more unnatural'? Poisoning, Women and Murder in 19th Century Australia
This article examines crimes committed by women involving the use of poison, notably upon their husbands, in 19th century colonial Australia. It draws on the extensive press archives of the period to determine if the historical and British perceptions and experiences of female poisoners of the 19th century were translated to 19th century Australia. The notion of the supposedly devoted wife...
-
The creation, flourishing, evolutionary decline and strange death of the District Court of New Zealand 1858-1909
This article investigates the history of the District Court in New Zealand between its creation in 1858 and its closure in 1909, a history that has hitherto been largely neglected by historians. It argues that the creation of the District Court was largely a response to the problems of providing an adequate but cheap court structure for the widespread colonist settlements away from the major...
-
Depositions, Household Space and Ownership in Colonial New South Wales
An examination of the language used in courts and legal documents shows that in colonial Sydney "things" were central to managing relationships and much of life was commoditised, particularly the housing market. The society was transitory, people moved constantly from house to house. Entangled with illiteracy, this created a particular power structure where paper became symbolic and a group of ex-
- Will the Real Innovator Please Stand Up?: Heretics, Pagans, Magicians and Theodosius I
-
The prisoners could not have that fair and impartial trial which justice demands': A fair criminal trial in 19th Century Australia
The notion of a "fair and impartial trial which justice demands" requires jurors to have regard only to the evidence presented at trial and discount anything they may hear or read outside court. Prejudicial publicity and prejudgement challenging an impartial jury is not a new problem, but have proved problematic since at least the 1800s. This article considers how trial by media was a recurring 19