The Waitangi Tribunal in the Context of New Zealand’s Political Culture and Historiography

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 339-361
Author(s):  
Richard P. Boast
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Internal Standard ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
State Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Waitangi Tribunal

One of the most elaborate systems of investigation into any nation’s colonial past is New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal, first set up in 1975, and which has now issued over 100 major reports on all aspects of the history of Maori interaction with the colonial state. The Waitangi Tribunal also exemplifies some particular features of the legal history of the Treaty of Waitangi, which in New Zealand has become seen as semi-constitutional text which forms an internal standard for legal investigations and for negotiation of redress. Current developments in New Zealand are highly consistent with long-established state practice, where relationships between the state and Maori have always been a matter of legal and political importance. Although the Waitangi Tribunal has some features in common with truth commissions in other countries, in many ways it is quite different from them.

scholarly journals A Legal History of the New Zealand Jury Service - Introduction, Evolution, and Equality?

1999 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 283
Author(s):  
Michèle Powles
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Jury Service ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jury System ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Service Introduction

This article traces the development of the New Zealand jury system. Most noteworthy in thisdevelopment has been the lack of controversy the system has created. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, the pursuit of equality in the legal system generally led to debate and reform of juries in relation to representation, race and gender.

Adjudication of Indigenous-Settler Relations

2018 ◽  
pp. 1060-1080
Author(s):  
Richard P. Boast
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Expert Evidence ◽  
Native Title ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
Australian Case ◽  
Waitangi Tribunal

This chapter examines the connections between the field of legal history and the various ways in which claims against states by indigenous groups are adjudicated and resolved. It focuses on ‘indigenous’ and ‘settler’ relationships, and on redress mechanisms in Australia and New Zealand. In both cases, the establishment of such mechanisms arose out of political and legal conjunctures within each country, and owed little to developments in international law. The Waitangi Tribunal in New Zealand and the Native Title Tribunal in Australia have very different functions, utilize different kinds of expert evidence, and operate in very different political and constitutional settings. While both bodies require expert evidence typically provided by non-indigenous specialist researchers, the required expertise in each case is different: anthropology in the Australian case, and history in New Zealand.

scholarly journals Multi-textualism, 'Treaty Hegemony' and the Waitangi Tribunal: Making Sense of 19th Century Crown-Māori Negotiations in Te Urewera

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 263
Author(s):  
Hannah Blumhardt
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Treaty Of Waitangi ◽  
Waitangi Tribunal

Between 1894 and 1896 the Crown conducted negotiations with Tūhoe which culminated in the 1895 Urewera Agreement and the Urewera District Native Reserve Act 1896. This article considers the constitutional implications of these negotiations and the resulting agreement and legislation. Adopting a 'multi-textual' conception of New Zealand legal history, and paying heed to the fact that Tūhoe did not sign the Treaty of Waitangi, the article argues that the Crown-Tūhoe relationship should be grounded predominantly in the 1895–1896 Agreement rather than the Treaty of Waitangi. In making this argument the article critiques the Waitangi Tribunal’s approach to these particular points in the first two pre-publications of its Te Urewera Report. The article argues that in finding that the Crown-Tūhoe negotiations and agreement signalled the beginning of a relationship based upon the Treaty of Waitangi, the Waitangi Tribunal erred in its approach.

scholarly journals Recognising Multi-textualism: Rethinking New Zealand's Legal History

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 547582
Author(s):  
Richard Boast
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Legal History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Treaty Of Waitangi ◽  
History Of

In this article the author discusses various written agreements that the New Zealand government has entered into with Māori since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. It is argued that the legal history of New Zealand is more "multi-textual", and more like Canada, the United States, and Argentina than is often thought. It is argued also that the process of agreement-making has been a continuously evolving one and at the present day is more important than ever. The article distinguishes between various types of Crown-Māori agreements and explores which of them are more Treaty-like than others.

scholarly journals The Treaty Claims Settlement Process in New Zealand and its Impact on Māori

Land ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mutu
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Treaty Of Waitangi ◽  
Treaty Monitoring ◽  
Settlement Policy ◽  
The Government ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Waitangi Tribunal ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Colonisation Process

This article considers research conducted on the impact of the Crown’s treaty claims settlement policy on Māori in New Zealand. It provides a brief background to the Treaty of Waitangi and the subsequent British colonisation process that relied on the Doctrine of Discovery in breach of the treaty. It outlines how colonisation dispossessed Māori of 95 percent of their lands and resources, usurped Māori power and authority and left them in a state of poverty, deprivation and marginalisation while procuring considerable wealth, prosperity and privilege for British settlers. The work of the Waitangi Tribunal, the commission of inquiry set up to investigate those breaches, is considered, as is the Crown’s reaction to the 1987 Lands case in developing its treaty claims settlement policy. The Crown unilaterally imposed the policy despite vehement opposition from Māori. Since 1992, it has legislated more than seventy ‘settlements’. The research shows that overall, the process has traumatised claimants, divided their communities, and returned on average less than one percent of their stolen lands. Proposals for constitutional transformation have drawn widespread support from Māori as a solution to British colonisation. United Nations treaty-monitoring bodies have recommended that the government discuss this with Māori.

Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions. Edited by Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. 309p. $55.00 cloth, $18.05 paper.

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 468-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Nobles
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Past History ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
History Of ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Military ◽  
Political Decisions

Scholarship is substantial and growing on "transitional jus- tice," that is, the legal and political decisions devised by incoming democratizing regimes to address the excesses of outgoing repressive regimes and the harms endured by their victims. Truth commissions are perhaps the most significant, if controversial, innovations in a democratizing regime's toolbox. Their significance is largely derived from their peculiarity. Since the early 1970s, approximately 21 commis- sions have been established in various countries. They have been defined as "bodies set up to investigate a past history of violations of human rights in a particular country-which can include violations by the military or other government forces or by armed opposition forces" (Priscilla Hayner, "Fifteen Truth Commissions-1974 to 1994: A Comparative Study," Human Rights Quarterly 16 [November 1994]: 597-655).

Australian Legal Histories in Context

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 607-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary Hunter
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Women And Gender ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Twentieth Anniversary ◽  
And Gender

Australian legal history has only emerged as a field of scholarship in its own right in the last twenty years. Prior to that, Australian legal history tended to be written and taught as a footnote to the great sweep of English legal history—the history of the king's courts, the common law and equity, and major nineteenth-century statutory reforms, with a chapter at the end about the classification of the Australian colonies as “settled” colonies, and the consequent reception of English law. This year (2002) sees the twentieth anniversary of Alex Castles's groundbreaking work An Australian Legal History, the first book to take Australian laws and legal institutions as its entire subject matter. It is also the twentieth anniversary of the first Australian Law and History Conference. The years since 1982 have seen the advent of the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society, increasing attendances at its annual conferences, the establishment of the Australian Journal of Legal History, the completion of a number of Ph.D.theses in the field, and the publication of further influential texts and edited collections by (among others) the authors of the two articles featured in this forum. Two of the most productive strands in this developing literature have concerned the history of colonization and the dispossession of indigenous peoples and histories of women and gender relations in law, although these are by no means that only areas that have been explored. Running through much of this literature, too, are themes of imperial-colonial relations, and relations between law and colonial economies and societies, particularly prior to federation in 1901.

scholarly journals A history of anti-seismic measures in New Zealand

1975 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 255-259
Author(s):  
G. A. Eiby
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Structural Investigations ◽  
Building Regulations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Civil Defence ◽  
Second World

The existence of a seismic problem in New Zealand was recognised in 1848. Limited governmental action and pioneering structural investigations followed. There were no major disasters between 1855 and 1929, and interest in earthquakes declined. Nevertheless, several papers by New Zealanders were published in the early 1920s, and the schools of engineering and architecture drew the attention of students to seismic problems. Modern building regulations have their origin in the report of a committee set up after the Hawke's Bay Earthquake in 1931, but some local authorities have still to adopt anti-seismic measures. The Hawkes Bay earthquake also stimulated observatory seismology. The earliest Civil Defence legislation was intended to deal with riots, and later with the effects of air attack, and the organisation has only recently become concerned with natural disaster. Relief measures were traditionally considered a matter for local
bodies or for the police and armed forces, and these bodies are still involved. Unique insurance measures were introduced during the Second World War. Since then there has been continuous advance in engineering and seismological research, improvements in building regulations, insurance provisions, and the organisation of civil defence.

scholarly journals Bringing the New Philology to Pacific Legal History

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 399
Author(s):  
Richard P Boast
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Legal History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Basic Requirement ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
History Of

This article is a study of the main features of the so-called new philology, a school of historians based mainly in the United States who have pioneered a novel approach to the history of indigenous societies under colonial rule by focusing on day-to-day "mundane" texts, typically legal documents or documents preserved in legal records, written in indigenous languages. It is suggested that New Zealand provides a unique opportunity to experiment with the approaches of the new philology outside Latin America as it meets the basic requirement of having preserved a significant amount of written documentation recorded in an indigenous language. What such a study might reveal is unclear, but the overall conclusion is that it should certainly be attempted. One weakness of the new philology, however, is that while it is based strongly on legal documents, it does not engage with law or with legal processes as such.

scholarly journals The Action for Breach of Promise of Marriage in Early Colonial New Zealand: Fitzgerald v Clifford (1846)

2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 473
Author(s):  
Megan Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

In 1846, the first breach of promise of marriage case was heard by the Supreme Court of New Zealand. Unlike many other breach of promise cases heard throughout the Empire during the nineteenth century, this case was not publicly reported. Rather, it is a case that exists only within the pages of Justice Chapman's judicial notebook, absent from the newspaper court reports of the time. This action was relatively rare in the colony but the testimonies of witnesses examined enable us to gain an insight into matters of class, courtship, family, reputation and social protocols in the mid-nineteenth century. This paper considers the legal history of the action in New Zealand from 1842-1875, focussing on the case of Fitzgerald v Clifford (1846) to explore how private matters of courtship and romance became matters of legal and sometimes public debate. 

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