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Latest News
2009
The December Issue: The Law Gets a Style Makeover
The Law Faculty has been heavily involved with the recently launched New Zealand Legal Style Guide.
Associate Professor Geoff McLay and Christopher Murray, student editor-in-chief of the VUW Law Review, along with Jonathan Orpin, barrister, have been principally responsible for its drafting.
At the launch, Justice Robert Chambers said: “It is hoped that the guide will be quickly adopted by everyone working in the law in New Zealand.”
The guide was funded by a grant from New Zealand Law Foundation.
Justice Chambers, 3rd from left, Geoff McLay, extreme right Christopher Murray
The Copyright Future
The NZ Centre of International Economic Law (NZCIEL) recently held a symposium at the Law School featuring Professor Jane Ginsburg as its keynote speaker.
Professor Ginsburg is the Morton L. Jankow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law at Columbia Law School and is a recognised authority on copyright.
The symposium “The Copyright Future: Authors, Owners, Orphans, Users and Repeat Infringers” addressed a hot issue – the protections that authors and owners have under copyright law and the challenges they face from legitimate and illegitimate users.
Real Issues in Real Time, Right Here
The NZCIEL also organised a recent conference that analysed the role of trade agreements in today’s uncertain times.
“Trade Agreements: Where Do We Go From Here?” brought together specialists from 10 countries. Keynote speaker Professor Peter Van Den Bossche, from the University of Maastricht, is an incoming member of the WTO Appellate Body and is regarded as a highly authoritative and influential analyst of current international economic law.
For further information about the NZCIEL, visit its website nzciel@vuw.ac.nz
The Problems of Parallel Litigation
The Law School’s Professor Campbell McLachlan has recently published a major work on international law.
Lis Pendens in International Litigation (published byMartinus Nijhoff) comes out of a series of lectures Professor McLachlan delivered last year as the first New Zealand-based academic to lecture at The Hague Academy of International Law.
The book looks at the question of what legal principles apply when courts in different jurisdictions are simultaneously seized with the same dispute.
Dame Hazel Genn
Dame Hazel Genn, New Zealand Law Foundation 2009 Distinguished Visiting Fellow, recently gave a lecture at this Law School “Civil justice reform and the role of ADR”. It is a lecture that aroused some controversy when she gave it in the UK as one of the Hamlyn Lectures last year.
We cannot reproduce it in full, as it is yet to be published in a collection of her Hamyln Lectures.
Click here for Dame Hazel’s introduction to the subject and a flyer and ordering form for the book.
A First for the Faculty
This country's first Law and Literature database was recently launched at a Faculty symposium.
The database has been transformed into an online website which contains an annotated bibliographic reference for each of the approximately 500 sources (novels, plays, poems, short stories, films and television programmes).
Dr Grant Morris has been constructing the database of legal references in New Zealand fictional literature and visual media and is one of the only lecturers teaching Law and Literature in this country.
To view the database click here.
Generous Alumnus
Judge Ian Borrin, alumnus and former District Court judge, has a room in the Law Library named in his honour.
The Ian Borrin Room acknowledges the annual donation of $20,000 Judge Borrin makes towards the publication of the Victoria University Law Review. He also helped with the publication of Richard Boast's award-winning book: "Buying the Land, Selling the Land".
Robin Cooke Lecture 2009
This year's lecture will be given by Emeritus Professor David Mullan.
He is one of a small number of New Zealand legal academics who have achieved outstanding distinction overseas.
He left Wellington in 1970 to pursue postgraduate study in Canada. Four decades later he is renowned as one of Canada's foremost scholars in administrative law.
The lecture is on Thursday, December 3.
Buying the Land, Selling the Land, Winning the Prize
Associate Professor Richard Boast has won this year's History prize at the Montana Book Awards for "Buying the Land, Selling the Land."
This represents a unique crossover from academia to a mainstream audience.
The book is a study of Crown Māori land policy and practice in the period 1865-1929.
Richard Boast teaches property law, legal history and energy and resources law. This year he was on the panel that reviewed the Foreshore and Seabed Act.
Launch of First Stage of Legal Maori Project
The first stage of this project has been launched.
It involves the collection of more than 14,000 pages of 19th century documents that illustrate the bi-lingual nature of New Zealand's legal history. The collection includes speeches of Māori MPs, Turton's collection of land deeds, Māori language translations of Acts of Parliament and more.
It is freely available to the public and can be accessed at: http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-corpus-legalMāori.htm
Project co-leader, law lecturer Māmari Stephens, says it is the first funded milestone for the project, which received $685,000 of funding from several sources last year.
Funding for research of criminal justice system
Associate Professor Elisabeth McDonald and Dr Yvette Tinsley have been awarded $85,000 by the New Zealand Law Foundation to investigate alternatives to the current pre-trial and trial processes for sexual offence cases.
Professor Jeremy Finn of Canterbury University is also part of the project.
The research is intended to stimulate debate within the community over the need for reform of the law, to indicate possible options for change, and to provide a principled and objective evaluation of the merits and disadvantages of each option.
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Updated: 4 December, 2009 © 2006 Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand