27 March 2008

NineToNoon: Pōwhiri and Human Rights

A little belatedly, below is a link to my discussion of some of the issues associated with Josie Bullock's (partly successful) discrimination claim against the Department of Corrections after she was asked not to sit in the from row at a departmental poroporoakī: > NineToNoon: "Law with Dean Knight" Also, below is a link to a post of my speaking notes on this issue at the LSAANZ conference last year: > LAWS179: "Pōwhiri and Human Rights: A Contest of Values?" Now that the decision is out, I'm presently working on merging the two into a full article.

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Course Lecturer

Dean Knight

Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law
Associate, New Zealand Centre for Public Law
Victoria University of Wellington
New Zealand

PhD Candidate
London School of Economics and Political Science
United Kingdom

Email: dean.knight@vuw.ac.nz

Course Outline

Lord Justice Lawton in Maxwell v Department of Trade and Industry [1974] 2 All ER 122 said:

"From time to time ... lawyers and judges have tried to define what constitutes fairness. Like defining an elephant, it is not easy to do, although fairness in practice has the elephantine quality of being easy to recognise. As a result of these efforts a word in common usage has acquired the trappings of legalism: 'acting fairly' has become 'acting in accordance with the rules of natural justice', and on occasion has been dressed up with Latin tags. This phrase in my opinion serves no useful purpose and in recent years it has encouraged lawyers to try to put those who hold inquiries into legal straitjackets.... For the purposes of my judgment I intend to ask myself this simple question: did the [decision-maker] act fairly towards the plaintiff?"


This course examines the elephantine concept of fairness in the law, along with other contemporary legal issues.

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