Constitutional lawyer’s gift to law school is worth $50,000, spread out over 10 years
Mai Chen – a lawyer focusing on constitutional and administrative law who graduated from and lectured at the University of Otago – has gifted the university with an annual award seeking to promote and reward innovative legal thinking.
“The reason for this award is that the common law develops and evolves to remain effective in serving all in society,” Chen said in the university’s news release. “Gaps can arise as society changes.”
The gift is valued at $5,000 annually for a decade. Each year, starting this year, the Mai Chen Legal Innovation Award, will go to the student judged to have produced the most innovative piece of original legal writing. Entries can cover different legal subjects and themes.
“This is a wonderful gift from Mai, rewarding student achievement and recognising the contribution the Faculty of Law at Otago brings to legal scholarship in Aotearoa New Zealand,” said Shelley Griffiths, dean of the University of Otago Faculty of Law, in the news release.
Each entry should be for a dissertation or research and writing assignment for an LLB/LLB(Hons) degree, said the news release. Ideally, it should meaningfully challenge or expand the boundaries of established understanding and thinking about the law.
“We are currently in a period of rapid change, including from artificial intelligence, the increasing numbers of indigenous and superdiverse peoples in New Zealand, climate change and global pandemics,” Chen said in the news release. “Law reform also requires fresh thinking.”
The selection panel includes the law dean or their nominee. The dean will also nominate three senior members of the legal community, such as members of the judiciary or senior practitioners with strong ties to the law school.
“We look forward to awarding this prize for the first time this year,” Griffiths said in the news release.
Three Otago alumni and justices – Forrest Miller of the Supreme Court of New Zealand and Christine French and Sarah Katz of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand – have agreed to be the inaugural judges for this year’s award.
“This award encourages thinking to keep our law match-fit to meet new scenarios and to re-appraise existing scenarios where appropriate, in the light of more facts coming to light,” Chen said in the university’s news release.
Chen’s history with Otago includes graduating with a first-class law honors degree in 1986, teaching as an assistant lecturer, and receiving an honorary doctor of laws degree last year for services to the legal profession.
On a fully-funded scholarship, she obtained her master of laws degree from Harvard Law School, where she won the Irving Oberman prize for the best human rights LLM thesis. She then interned at the International Labour Organization in Geneva on a Harvard human rights scholarship.
During her time with the Victoria University of Wellington Faculty of Law, she was the youngest senior lecturer in law in New Zealand back then. She wrote Public Law Toolbox: Solving Problems with Government, the country’s first practice book on public law.
