PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW: A New Zealand Perspective.

• Author: Keith, Kenneth

PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW: A New Zealand Perspective

Editor: Alberto Costi

Published by: LexisNexis, Wellington, 2020, 1075pp, $220.

INTERNATIONAL LAW IN AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND

Editors: An Hertogen and Anna Hood

Published by: Thomson Reuters, Wellington, 2021, 727pp, $182.75.

These two volumes are the first attempts to give an overall account of New Zealand's role in and contributions to the statement and development of international law. They are very much to be welcomed. They appear fully 55 years after the first volume on International Law in Australia, edited, as it happens, by a New Zealander, Daniel Patrick O'Connell, and published, as were the following two editions, by the Australian Institute of International Affairs. Both New Zealand books will be of value, not just to practicing lawyers, academic lawyers and law students but also to the many in this country and abroad who are involved or have an interest in international affairs.

Both have chapters on matters of major importance to New Zealand, notably statehood, the law of the sea, New Zealand and the Pacific, Antarctica, international trade, international criminal law, human rights, international dispute settlement, international organisations and the place of international law in New Zealand law.

I must declare an interest. As the editors generously recognise, I had a hand in the preparation of both books. I also face the challenge arising from the numbers of authors and chapters, sixteen authors in the first (along with several students) and seventeen in the second and twenty chapters in each. One significant feature of the authorship is the gender balance, especially in the second, a change which reflects the very large increase in women studying law, an increase, in the case of my university, that began over 40 years ago. I cannot do justice to the individual authors, several of whom appear in both, within the scope of this review. From time to time I use the expression 'first' or 'second' book, on the basis simply of date not of value, I stress!

Rather, I emphasise a few themes. The first is about the difference in approaches of the two books. The first provides a description of an extensive range of international law issues with many references to New Zealand practice. The second, by contrast, does not aim at being comprehensive but is more evaluative, notably by raising the question whether 'Aotearoa New Zealand is a good international citizen'. The authors of the chapters...