Māori judiciary members have been a significant target
The Māori Law Society | Te Hunga Rōia Māori o Aotearoa has decried recent personal attacks on members of the judiciary by legal professionals.
In a column published by the NZ Law Society, the Māori Law Society called out the “unwelcome trend of increasing personal attacks” – many of which were targeted towards Māori members that comprise only a small part of the judiciary. The Māori Law Society described the attacks as “brazen” and said that while debating the merits of specific cases was “part of healthy democratic discourse”, the recent comments in question were “certainly not that”.
The organisation pointed out that under the New Zealand legal system, judges cannot publicly defend themselves. Moreover, such attacks weakened trust and confidence in the judiciary.
“These opinion pieces are often misinformed, accompanied by a degree of hysteria and, often, plainly incorrect commentary”, the Māori Law Society wrote. “Some of this misinformation centres on the nature of tikanga and Māori society in general”.
The organisation cited as an example the inaccurate perspective of common law as “being entirely written down and knowable in advance, apparently in contrast to the uncertain beast that is tikanga Māori”.
“This misunderstands both. The stated uncertainty of tikanga reflects a lack of knowledge of its nature and norms, rather than an inherent quality of tikanga. Further, on the common law, in contrast, Lord Walker described the lofty aspirations of finality and certainty within the common law as a high, and even insurmountable, threshold in a system which rests on incremental development – the ‘antithesis of finality and certainty’,” the Māori Law Society wrote.
It added that there was “nothing new or radical” about recognising tikanga Māori in harmony with common law.
“The common law in all jurisdictions, including ours, has from the very beginning always had a place for the recognition of laws pre-existing the common law, such as tikanga Māori”, the Māori Law Society wrote. “Most people will hopefully be able to see through the tired tropes and cynical references to tikanga practices, that died out hundreds of years ago, as evidence of the “problem” of tikanga as law”.
