AUT's dean steps down to go away and work quietly in a corner [updated]

Legal battles can be very personal, but arguments about the law less so. Yet when barrister Gary Judd criticised the impetus from AUT's law school dean Khylee Quince to "embed tikanga" in students' first year -- to be taught that tikanga is "the first law of the country" -- her reply was that Judd, a King's Counsel (KC), should "go die quietly in a corner."

Judd is fortunately still with us. And Quince, still unapologetic, is now stepping down as dean to go away and work quietly in a corner. Her legacy however remains: that those wishing to take up law as a reasoning discipline should try to find a university with a faculty whose leadership has greater respect for that argument.

And issues remain. As Samira Taghavi says (a barrister and practice manager at Active Legal Solutions and a member of The Law Association’s council and Criminal Law committee), 

Khylee Quince’s belittlement of Judd KC raises important questions about the lessons we impart to the next generation of lawyers. Are we equipping them to confront and counter challenging viewpoints effectively? Or are we teaching them to resort to personal attacks?

So let's leave the personal and look at law. As Judd pointed out, quite simply: tikanga cannot be "first law" because tikanga is not law at all, it is a collection of beliefs; to tell students it is law is cultural indoctrination.

[T]ikanga” ... is a set of beliefs, principles of a spiritual nature, a way of life (“the right Māori way of doing things”). When beliefs result in people consistently behaving in a certain way, the behaviour may become customary. Then, in certain carefully confined circumstances, customs may attain the status of law.
    If “tikanga” were confined in its meaning to customs which had attained the status of law, there would be no problem. Introducing a regime which would impose beliefs, principles of a spiritual nature, a way of life of some of our people, on the nation as a whole is a completely different proposition. Beliefs and principles of a spiritual nature are not law. The way of life of some is not part of the law of the land. ...

Where tikanga beliefs have been acted on, they may have given rise to customary behaviour and those customs might [mature] into a species of customary law applicable for specific purposes, for example for determining who owns Māori land, but [one cannot simply declare] that tikanga [is] first law.
Calling tikanga something which patently it is not, not only offends reason but undermines the value of what it actually is. Making a falsehood a fundamental part of the description of its nature is not a good way to ensure its survival. ...
Beliefs, even if common to the entire population, are not law. However, beliefs may cause people to act in a certain way. Those actions may become customary and may even mature into customary law.

But they are not yet law, let alone first law. And hissy fits still won't change that.

UPDATE: Her time is up, literally -- her five-year term has expired. But judging by the results of last September's AUT staff survey, it looks like few of her colleagues will be mourning. Kiwiblog reported:

I have been leaked a copy of the latest staff survey from AUT Law Faculty and it is very clear that it is a very unhappy place. Here are some of their results:Would recommend AUT as a great place to work 45%

• AUT is in a position to succeed 42%
• Have confidence in senior leaders at AUT 35%
• AUT has a thriving research culture 35%
• Am comfortable reporting inappropriate behaviour 30%
• Workloads are divided fairly 25%
• Innovation is recognised and rewarded 20%
• At AUT we are good at learning from our mistakes 20%
• The right people are recognised and rewarded 20%
• If someone is not delivering in their role we do something about it 5% ...

As you can see [in the above Powerpoint screenshot] the results for the Law Faculty are much much lower than AUT as a whole. So this would suggest the major issue is not the central administration, but the faculty management itself. I [David Farrar] am told by sources that everyone knows what the major problem is, but people are too scared to say so.

"Te Pāti Māori’s obsession with dividing people by ancestry belongs in the past. The rest of us should be focused on equality before the law."

"Te Pāti Māori’s obsession with dividing people by ancestry belongs in the past. The rest of us should be focused on equality before the law, something that the so-called colonial system has [had?] already delivered better than anything tikanga-based governance ever could."

~ Matua Kahurangi from his post 'David Seymour exposes the fraud of the anti-colonial crusade' [hat tip HomePaddock]

"These absurdities are multiplied throughout today’s New Zealand. I cannot say 'modern' New Zealand because we see here a reversion to the prehistoric."

"[T]he Northland Regional Council['s] 'draft blueprint for improving freshwater' tells its readers that .. 'the water cycle is an expression of love between the heavens and earth, and each stage is a critical component. The Atua who control these elements [says the 'blueprint'] are in charge of condensation, evaporation, collection and precipitation.' Atua, according to Williams's 'Dictionary of the Māori Language' ... is 'God, Demon, supernatural being, ghost.'
    "By these words and others, the regional council is indicating that its draft freshwater plan has been informed by ideas that freshwater is a living being deriving from the gods, that it should be respected as an ancestor, and that the plan weaves together those views and 'western world views' so that the well-being of the water cycle is prioritised, respected and protected. ...

"These absurdities are multiplied throughout today’s New Zealand. I cannot say 'modern' New Zealand because we see here a reversion to the prehistoric. The absurdities bring to mind the title of a collection of Ayn Rand and Peter Schwartz essays: 'Return of the Primitive: the Anti-Industrial Revolution.' ... In his Introduction ... Peter Schwartz noted that:

'Primitive, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means: "Of or belonging to the first age, period or stage; pertaining to early times…" With respect to human development, primitivism is a pre-rational stage. It is a stage in which man lives in fearful awe of a universe he cannot understand. The primitive man does not grasp the law of causality. He does not comprehend the fact that the world is governed by natural laws and that nature can be ruled by any man who discovers those laws. To a primitive, there is only a mysterious supernatural. Sunshine, darkness, rainfall, drought, the clap of thunder, the hooting of a spotted owl—all are inexplicable, portentous, and sacrosanct to him. To this non-conceptual mentality, man is metaphysically subordinate to nature, which is never to be commanded, only meekly obeyed.'

"This is the world that the Northland Regional Council would return us to. ... that countless councils, other governmental bodies, some political parties and others would return us to ... to which some of our judges and the New Zealand Council of Legal Education would have us return ...

"It has taken centuries for humanity to struggle and claw its way out of a swamp of ignorance and superstition to gain an understanding of the world, of the universe in which we live, and to use that understanding to create better lives for all. Yet, there are those who act as if they wish humanity to reverse course and return to a world of ignorance and superstition, to travel along a pathway to ignorance as I have heard it described. I cannot comprehend how any rational person could honestly desire that to occur."

~ Gary Judd from his post 'Return of the primitive'

"This is logically why confirmation of tino rangatiratanga is paired with advice on how to go about selling the land."

"[T]he Maori language of the Treaty is now routinely referenced to a world in which it did not exist. [For example] what [translator Henry] Williams might have meant in Article 2, which confirmed Maori in the tino rangatiratanga of everything they possessed. 

    "The aim of the Treaty was not to protect Maori culture; on the contrary, Williams believed that the processes of modernisation were active and sufficient agents of its transformation. It strains belief that, having transferred sovereignty to the Crown in the first article, Williams would posit a principle of omni-applicable Maori authority in the second, yet recent analysis is dependent on this being the case. The British did, of course, care about securing the colony’s land base. This is logically why confirmation of tino rangatiratanga is paired with advice on how to go about selling the land. The logic, and the crudeness of the pairing, point to tino rangatiratanga’s referring not to culture in the sense of Māoriness itself, but specifically to land and resource ownership.

    "Linguistic evidence offers support for this view. As we have seen, translators bent rangatiratanga to the expression of a variety of aspects of western ideas of authority, for which there were no existing Maori terms. Authority over land therefore fits easily in this category. As for evidence offered by context, one example must suffice here. It cannot be overstressed that anxiety about their future authority over the land was the most common theme of chiefs’ speeches at the Treaty hui. There was, therefore, good reason for the Pakeha to make a strong affirming statement not only of Maori ownership of the land, but of their continuing power of decision over its alienation.
    "It needs to be said that confining rangatiratanga to land ownership does not diminish the contemporary importance of Article 2. Land was the Maori stake in the colony. First, it was the commodity with which modernity was purchased. Second, by owning the land, Maori also controlled the most important bound­ary to state power. Nothing, therefore, was of greater importance than the confirmation of ownership. However, a crucial difference between current and historical meanings remains. In 1840 tino rangatiratanga did not distance Maori from the state, but fulfilled the logic of the Treaty’s concern with land.
    "In sum, Henry Williams translated the Treaty of Waitangi for his day, not for posterity. If the task was too lightly and amateurishly approached, this does not seem to require a paranoiac analysis. Within the narrow confines of the trans­lators’ perceptions, word choices in the Maori texts of both the ‘Declaration’ and the Treaty suggest only a striving for precision."

~ Lyndsay Head, from her article 'The Pursuit of Modernity in Māori Society', pp. 107-108