Dean Knight

Position

Senior Lecturer
Associate Director, NZ Centre for Public Law

Qualifications

LLM UBC, LLB(Hons) BCA

Profile

Dean is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Law, and is also one of the Associate Directors of the New Zealand Centre for Public Law. He graduated from Victoria University with LLB(Hons) and BCA degrees and later completed an LLM at the University of British Columbia, with his thesis examining public law estoppel and the substantive protection of legitimate expectations.

Dean’s scholarly interests lie in public and administrative law and the rule of law. A particular focus of his work is local government (local democracy and various forms of regulation by local authorities). In addition, Dean maintains an interest in gay and lesbian legal issues, particularly various human rights issues and reforms in this area.
Before joining the Faculty, Dean spent eight years in private practice with an Australasian law firm in their litigation and environment and public law teams. One of Dean’s main areas of specialisation was local government and he spent some time seconded as in-house counsel for a local authority.

Dean is one of the co-authors of LexisNexis’ Local Government loose-leaf text and is a member of the editorial committee of the New Zealand Journal for Public and International Law. He also maintains a blog on legal issues: ‘LAWS179 Elephants and the Law’ (www.laws179.blogspot.com). .

Research Interests

• public and administrative law
• local government law
• Rule of Law
• gay and lesbian issues.

Teaching 2009

LAWS 322 Judicial Review (Trimester 3)

Teaching 2010

LAWS 213 Public Law
LAWS 523 Local Government and Democracy
LAWS 561/461 The Scope of Public Law: Exploring the Public-Private Divide

Blog

LAWS179: "Elephants and the Law"

Selected Publications

"Local authority decision-making, community views, and Stadium Aotearoa" [2007] NZLJ 354.

"Ameliorating the Collateral Damage Caused by Collateral Attack in Administrative Law" (2006) 4 NZJPIL 117

"'I'm Not Gay - Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That!': Are Unwanted Imputations of Gayness Defamatory?" (2006) 37 VUWLR 249

View Publications