Injunctions and compliance orders: some procedural issues

An injunction is a remedy originally devised in the Court of Chancery in England, mainly, it appears, for the purpose of bringing proceedings in the courts of common law to a halt and having the cases transferred to Chancery (Baker, 1979, pp. 90-91). Today it is an important judicial remedy used in many different situations, sometimes alone, sometimes in combination with other remedies such as damages. An injunction is a discretionary remedy, directed at a particular person, ordering that person to either do something (a mandatory injunction) or to stop doing or not to do something (a restrictive injunction). I Since an injunction is an order of the High Court, a person who wilfully disobeys it - as is the case with any court order - has committed a contempt of court. Although such a contempt is a "civil" rather than a "criminal" contempt, the consequences can be exceptionally severe. The alleged contemnor can be fined or committed to jail by an order of the court, and can be detained in custody until the fmes are paid or the order is complied with. Although matters are rarely taken so far, the threat of such alarming possibilities usually means that injunctions are instantly obeyed

The sexual harassment provisions of the Labour Relations Act

Sexual harassment is not wholly self-contained, in that it can be relevant to other types of personal grievance. There is no reason why sexual harassment could not, for instance, amount to constructive dismissal. In this paper I will focus on the specific sexual harassment provisions of the 1987 Ac

Maori Fisheries 1986-1998: A Reflection

In this article Richard Boast considers the statutory settlements of Maori fishing claims made in 1989 and 1992.  These settlements are seen as examples of a distinctive method of dealing with Maori grievances routinely used in the New Zealand legal and political system.  He also considers the aftermath of the legislation, and the extent to which the recent claims of Urban Maori authorities have questioned the entire settlement process as it has evolved to date

'Is little to be gained by lamenting the past?' : Assessing the extent to which addressing the past legacy of the South African and Kenyan judiciaries by means of transitional justice mechanisms, has contributed to achieving the objectives of judicia

The purpose of this dissertation is to determine whether it is important for the future development of legal systems in post-authoritarian or post-conflict states to confront the unjust past legacy of their judiciaries. In order to determine this, one has to assess the extent to which addressing the unjust past legacy of such judiciaries, by means of transitional justice mechanisms, has contributed to achieving the objectives of judicial reform is these contexts. This is accomplished by firstly, analysing the contribution of the TRC Legal Hearing to judicial reform in post-Apartheid South Africa. Secondly, the contribution which the vetting of the Kenyan judiciary made to achieving judicial reform in Kenya after the 2007 Election crisis is assessed. In both circumstances, the final contributions of these transitional justice mechanisms to achieving the objectives of judicial reform are weighed against the contributions of other mechanisms. It is argued that both the transitional justice mechanisms of truth commissions and judicial vetting contributed to achieving objectives of judicial reform in South Africa and Kenya. However, the extent of the contributions differed in each case because of unique political factors. It is concluded that confronting the unjust past legacy of judiciaries in post-authoritarian and post-conflict states is indeed important for the future development of their legal systems

The Omahu Affair, the Law of Succession and the Native Land Court

This article discusses the Omahu affair, a prominent legal drama that took place in the late 19th century involving prominent Māori leaders from the Hawke’s Bay region. The case was the subject of numerous Native Land Court hearings, decisions of the ordinary courts, and ultimately a Privy Council decision in London. This article considers how tensions within the Māori community could drive cases in the Native Land Court, and explores the interconnections between that Court and the ordinary courts. It seeks to promote a more sophisticated view of the Court's role, particularly in the context of inter-Māori disputes, as well as of the complexities of legal and political affairs in 19th century New Zealand. The article also raises some questions relating to the role of elites in the Māori community, and the interconnections between Māori and European elites in 19th century New Zealand

The water wars novel

‘Water wars’ are back. Conflicts in Syrian, Yemen and Israel/Palestine are regularly framed as motivated by water and presented as harbingers of a world to come. The return of ‘water wars’ rhetoric, long after its 1990s heyday, has been paralleled by an increasing interest among novelists in water as a cause of conflict. This literature has been under-explored in existing work in the Blue Humanities, while scholarship on cli-fi has focused on scenarios of too much water, rather than not enough. In this article I catalogue key features of what I call the ‘water wars novel’, surveying works by Paolo Bacigalupi, Sarnath Banerjee, Varda Burstyn, Assaf Gavron, Emmi Itäranta, Karen Jayes and Cameron Stracher, writing from the United States, India, Canada, Israel, Finland and South Africa. I identify the water wars novel as a distinctive and increasingly prominent mode of ‘cli-fi’ that reveals and obscures important dimensions of water crises of the past, present and future

Rating of Māori Land: A Legal History

This article deals with the rating of Māori freehold land as a case study of a field of law where Māori Land Law and Taxation Law overlap. Rates, are, of course, a type of tax. For Māori landowners, paying rates and rates debts were probably the most important tax-related problem they had to confront. The issue was not only that Māori landowners often could not afford to pay rates. While that was the case, the real issue was the overlay between Māori land law and tax law as such. The real problem with rating of Māori land was the Māori land law system itself. This article explains why this is so, and utilises rating law as a window into the complexities of the statutory Māori land law system and the complexities it caused to Māori landowners