News Item

Conference: to mark the Retirement of Chief Justice Sian Elias

31 JAN – 1 FEB 2019, UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND

The Legal Research Foundation, with the support of the New Zealand Law Foundation, is holding a 2-day conference to mark the retirement of Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias. A line-up of distinguished international and local speakers will explore the future direction of New Zealand law. This will be an opportunity for the legal profession to acknowledge the Chief Justice upon her retirement.

Conference main themes:

• Common Law Constitutionalism
• Law and Power on the Frontier
• The Supervisory Jurisdiction and Administrative Justice
• Environmental Justice and Climate Change
• Topics in Private Law
• Where to for Indigenous Rights and Reconciliation?
• Criminal Law
• Human Rights
• Judging

The conference will be chaired by Dr Andrew Butler, Chair of the New Zealand Law Foundation.

Venue: Fisher and Paykel Auditorium, University of Auckland
Dates: 31 Jan to 1 Feb 2019

A pre-conference p?whiri will take place at Waipapa Marae, University of Auckland at 4pm on Wednesday, 30 January 2019.

Conference programme – including list of speakers and their topics

Bookings and further information

NZ Law Foundation has granted up to $50,000 towards bringing international speakers to this conference

2019 Sir John Graham Lecture by Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

Research Chair in Historical Trauma and Transformation at Stellenbosch University, South Africa

5 JULY 2019, PULLMAN HOTEL, AUCKLAND

Professor Gobodo-Madikizela’s lecture is titled “Repairing the Brokenness of the Past”. She will speak about reconciliation and justice, drawing on her experience as a member of the Human Rights Violations Committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. She will bring a unique perspective and experience to our national conversations.

Lecture information and bookings

About Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

NZ Law Foundation has awarded up to $3,200 towards bringing Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela to New Zealand for this event.

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd – NZ Law Foundation 2019 Distinguished Visiting Fellow

9 Sept to 12 Oct 2019, UNIVERSITY OF WAIKATO (host)

Lord Thomas is the former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales (2013-2017) and an internationally respected contract scholar and theorist of private law. He has a particular interest in aspects of IT, digitalisation, data and AI – particularly their effect on law, legal practice and the courts.

While in New Zealand Lord Thomas will be hosted by the Faculty of Law at University of Waikato and tour all law schools giving staff seminars and public lectures. These will focus on the effect of the digital (or fourth industrial) revolution on the law, legal practice and the courts and legal education.

Topics Lord Thomas has put forward to speak on.

Further information about Lord Thomas

Law Foundation has awarded up to $40,000 towards the costs of bringing Lord Thomas to New Zealand as our 2019 Distinguished Visiting Fellow

2019 AMINZ CONFERENCE

1-3 AUG 2019, CHRISTCHURCH

The theme for this year’s AMINZ Conference is “Still making it work”.The focus will be on disasters and the place of dispute resolution with a particular emphasis on earthquakes, floods and climate change.

More about the conference will appear once its available

NZ Law Foundation has awarded up to $7,000 towards supporting the attendance of 20 law students/your practitioners.

2-Day Symposium: Contemporary issues for children’s rights: international and national contexts

19-20 AUG 2019 (date tbc), RUTHERFORD HOUSE, VUW

This two-day symposium will examine contemporary issues affecting children’s rights across 4 broad areas: (1) the care system (2) the criminal jurisdiction (3) the Family Court (4) the voice of the child in matters affecting them.

Keynote speakers:

• Professor Laura Lundy – Co-director for Centre for Children’s Rights, and Professor in the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work at Queens University. Her expertise is in children’s right to participate in decision-making and education rights.
• Professor Ursula Kilkelly – Law Dean at the School of Law, University College Cork (UCC), Head of the College of Business and Law, and an international children’s rights scholar. Director of the Child Law Clinic, a research initiative that provides student-led research services to lawyers litigating children’s issues. She teaches Child Law in Practice, Children’s Rights and Juvenile Justice.
• Bruce Adamson – Children’s and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
• Justice Vui Clarence Nelson – member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and a Judge of the Supreme Court of Samoa

NZ Law Foundation in conjunction with the Borrin Foundation has awarded up to $28,260 towards the costs of bringing four keynote speakers to this symposium, publications costs of material from the symposium, and three post graduate student scholarships to cover attendance.

2019 Common Ground Nation Building Governance CANZUS Symposium*

10-16 NOV 2019, WAIKATO/TAUPO/BAY OF PLENTY REGIONS

Te Mata Hautu Taketake Maori – Maori & Indigenous Governance Centre (MIGC) will host the Symposium being run from Waikato. It’s anticipated that fifty international delegates from representative Indigenous Governance Institutions will take part.

The symposium will open at the MIGC within Te Piringa Faculty of Law and Waikato Tainui’s endowed College of Research at Hopuhopu in Hamilton. The delegation will view presentations from, and make site visits to various tribal groups to gain personal insight into the world of Maori governance. A key objective of the symposium is for delegates to share indigenous governance challenges and successes, to observe and experience successful Maori governance models, to collaborate and workshop together, and to produce a number of quality indigenous governance publications.

More details about the symposium, its speakers and programme, will be published when available.

The Law Foundation is contributing $20,000 towards bringing international speakers to this symposium
*CANZUS is Canada, New Zealand, Australia

Workshops – options for reforming trial process in acquaintance rape cases

28 AUG 2019, AUCKLAND
30 AUG 2019, WELLINGTON

Professor Elisabeth McDonald and Paulette Benton-Greig will present findings and reform proposals from their research into rape cases – adult acquaintance cases and comparator cases from Specialist Sexual Violence Court Pilot.

Workshop participants include international experts on rape law reform Professor Vanessa Munro (University of Warwick) and Associate-Professor Julia Quilter (University of Wollongong)

NZ Law Foundation in conjunction with the Borrin Foundation has awarded up to $16,355 towards bringing two international speakers and towards workshop costs