The Waitangi Tribunal and the Whanganui river-bed
F M Jock Brookfield
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In its Whanganui River Report (1999) the Waitangi Tribunal found a number of acts of the Crown in respect of the river to be in breach of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Professor Brookfield accepts the substantial merits of the Tribunal's findings but questions its treatment of the law relating to Maori customary rights in (1) the foreshore and seabed of the tidal reaches and (2) the bed of the navigable river. The impact on those rights of general legislation declaring the title of the Crown is considered in detail. Professor Brookfield also considers the Tribunal's treatment of the common law presumption that a riparian owner's title extends to the middle line of the river and draws attention to some aspects of the matter requiring future attention.
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Revocation and the unilateral contract: a reappraisal
Donald Clark
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As a publicity stunt, an America's Cup sponsor challenges a media personality to walk from Cape Reinga to Auckland for a $5,000 prize. The challenge is taken up, but with the City of Sails in the walker's sights the sponsor, angered by comments made during television coverage of the event, announces the withdrawal of the offer. What is the position under the law of contract? A recent commercial case led the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia into an extensive exploration of revocation in the context of a unilateral contract. The author analyses and counters the Court's reasons for denying that any substantive right would have been breached in the hypothetical described above. The article then turns to the complex remedial issues involved, and concludes with a more wide-ranging discussion of conditionality in differing contractual contexts.
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Judicial indications of inconsistency - a new weapon in the bill of rights armoury?
Andrew S Butler
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In this article, Andrew Butler considers Moonen v Film & Literature Board of Review, in which the Court of Appeal Sates that New Zealand courts have the power and, on occasion, the duty to indicate that a statute is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, notwithstanding that they are required by s 4 of that Act to give effect to enactments regardless of their consistency with the Bill of Rights. He considers (1) what sort of legal measure the "judicial indication of BORA inconsistency" is meant to be; (2) whether in fact there is jurisdiction to make a judicial indication of BORA inconsistency; (3) a range of practical and procedural issues that will arise if the jurisdiction is recognised by the courts; and (4) finally, what recognition of the jurisdiction would mean for the curent paradigm of New Zealand constitutional law.
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2000 PART I
