De-ageing Family Law: Re-engineering the Children-Adults/Parents Machine

Since 2005, the Hong Kong Government has proposed to replace the concept of ‘parental rights’ with ‘parental responsibility’ in the legal machine controlling and regulating child custody in divorce cases. However, it has again reduced ‘children’ to a powerless position, arguing that it can positively protect the ‘best interests’ of children. In this article, the author suggests that only by de-ageing law can the unequal power relationship between children and adults be challenged, and hence, can – and will – children’s views and subjectivity be respected and constituted in family law proceedings.

Lost from Sight: Developing Recognition of Māori Law in Aotearoa New Zealand

In Aotearoa New Zealand, the state legal system is increasingly drawing on aspects of Māori law. Recent decisions suggest that the courts are willing to consider Māori law as a source of New Zealand law. This marks a change from earlier approaches which recognised discrete customary practices as customary law. Questions of state recognition of customary law have tended to focus attention on common law tests and so obscure processes of the Indigenous legal system, the sources of Indigenous law, and Indigenous forms of legal reasoning and communication. This article suggests that by focusing instead on understanding the application of Māori law within a fuller cultural context, the New Zealand courts may be better able to reveal and understand the Indigenous legal principles and processes at work. This would include engaging with a different range of legal sources, including working with Māori stories as legal texts, to make visible aspects of Indigenous law that can help to drive developments in the state legal system.

Framing Law Stories: Work Health and Safety and the Self-employed Person’s Wellbeing

The question of whether law can, or cannot, touch the territory of the wellbeing of workers is steadfastly rising to the surface of the contemporary world of work. This begs exploration of whether current law provides ways to workers’ wellbeing. This article explores whether the self-duties that the self-employed person owes herself under sub-sections 19(5) and 28(a) of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011(NSW) (‘WHSA’) touch her wellbeing at work. The WHSA is the state’s adoption of the Model Work Health and Safety Act. In adopting the methodology of legal narratology ( Olson 2014 ), this article unframes grand narratives of law and wellbeing and renders a collection of micro narratives which emerged from the law stories told by seven self-employed persons juxtaposed with the story the WHSA tells of itself. The research has been conducted in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales. The article draws upon four law stories which frame the interpretations that: (1) the self-employed person must ensure, and take reasonable care for, his or her own physical and psychological wellbeing and safety, while wellbeing unlimited from that definition lies in law’s lacunae; (2) the self-employed person must ensure the provision of adequate facilities for her wellbeing at work and the maintenance of those facilities, while an intentional by-product of discharging health and safety duties is wellbeing beyond liability; (3) the self-employed person may, or may not, promote wellbeing in discharging her self-duties ( Tooma 2020 ); and (4) a desire for law in the self’s wellbeing appeals to law beyond the WHSA. The article ultimately invites the reader’s own interpretations of the ineffable, sometimes called wellbeing.

The Problematic of Judicial Accountability

Judicial officers are critical actors in the operation of the justice system. Because of the powers inherent in this role, protections for judicial independence and protections against judicial misconduct are equally essential elements in the design and operation of the justice system. Judicial self-regulation has been the primary arrangement for responding to substantiated allegations of misconduct that is deemed insufficient to warrant referral to parliament for consideration of removal from office. Reflecting on the relatively recent performance of systems and processes in responding to alleged judicial misbehaviour, this article seeks to foster discussion on the best means for achieving the balance between the power of the position and accountability for its exercise.