Waitangi Book Wins Legal Prize

"Waitangi and Indigenous Rights: Revolution, Law and Legitimation" by Professor Emeritus F M 'Jock' Brookfield has won the J F Northey Memorial Book Award as the best legal book published by a New Zealand-based author in 1999.

"Waitangi and Indigenous Rights" is about revolution. It asks how can the revolutionary taking of power by one people over another be partly legitimated? And investigates how to deal with the wrongs done to those taken over, which must then be redressed - with due allowance for the new rights and interests that have arisen.

Part 1 deals with the role of law in actual or threatened revolution, but especially in the revolutionary expansions of Western imperialism. In Part 2 the focus narrows further: on the British Crown's seizure of power over Aotearoa-New Zealand beginning in 1840, the counter-revolutionary challenges of Maori over the years, the establishment of the separate New Zealand Crown, and the present problems of doing justice to Maori constitutional claims.

The JF Northey Award is one of several awarded annually by the Legal Research Foundation for legal writing by New Zealand-based authors.

Other winners in 2000 are Associate Professor Ross Grantham of The University of Auckland, who was awarded the Sir Ian Barker Published Article Award, and Otago law student Rochelle Brown, who won the Undergraduate Unpublished Writing Award for her paper entitled "Save the Children? Processes and Principles to be Applied When the Court is Asked to Override Parents' Refusal to Consent to a Child's Life-saving Medical Treatment".

The Legal Research Foundation was established in 1965 to encourage legal research and writing, and to promote seminars on legal matters. The Foundation is administered by a Council which consists of: a President, The Honourable Justice Rod Hansen; a Director, Mr Bruce Gray; a representative of the Law Society; legal practitioners; members of The University of Auckland Faculty of Law staff; and student representatives.

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