Treaty book best NZ legal work
Dr Matthew Palmer’s book The Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand’s Law and Constitution has been named New Zealand’s best legal book for 2008.
The work won the J F Northey Book Award, presented by the Legal Research Foundation at its annual meeting in Auckland on 28 May.
Matthew Palmer wrote this book while holding the New Zealand Law Foundation’s International Research Fellowship. Victoria University Press, supported by the Law Foundation, published the book.
At its launch on 13 November, Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias QC described the work as being “of the greatest practical importance to our society and its future direction”.
The Auckland University-based Legal Research Foundation makes three writing awards annually.
Professor Philip Joseph won the second award, the Sir Ian Barker Published Article Award. This prize was for the best article, essay or discrete book chapter published in 2008.
His article was entitled The Constitutional State in the book Law, Liberty, Legislation: Essays in Honour of John Burrows QC, edited by Jeremy Finn and Stephen Todd and published by LexisNexis.
Legal Research Foundation President Justice Raynor Asher QC presented Professor Joseph with his prize.
Professor Joseph said he was “especially delighted” to receive the award for two reasons. “First, 15 years ago I won the other major award administered by the Legal Research Foundation – the J F Northey Memorial Book Award – for the first edition of Constitutional and Administrative Law in New Zealand. So it is a legal ‘double’ of sorts to receive this award also. Secondly, it was the first time I have put in for the award.”
Professor Joseph described the article as a rather irreverent look at our Westminster constitutional arrangements.
“My essay promotes an alternative understanding of the constitution from that upheld by orthodox positivist scholarship. It applies a normative analysis to critique the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, which is held out under our constitution as the ultimate principle of legality. However that doctrine implodes when critically assessed through a normative lens,” he said.
The third prize went to Laura Fraser, who completed an LLB (Hons) and BA in politics at Otago University this year. Laura won the Unpublished Student Paper Award of for her paper entitled Property Rights in Environmental Management: The Nature of Resource Consents in the Resource Management Act 1991.
Late last year, Laura was named a 2009 Rhodes Scholar-elect and, in September, she will begin study at Oxford University towards a Bachelor of Civil Law followed by an MSc in environmental change and management.
After gaining her qualifications, she hopes to pursue a career providing legal and policy advice in the context of climate and environmental change.
Laura was the 2008 editorial manager of the New Zealand Law Students Journal. A strong debater and mooter, she has been a member of several national and international debating and mooting teams, winning a number of awards.
LawTalk 732, 29 June 2009