The Dean of the law school at the Auckland University of Technology is someone called Khylee Quince. I have been sent her social media posting in which she has, over the LawNews headline “Senior King’s Counsel files complaint about compulsory tikanga Maori studies for law students,” written these enlightened words:
I suppose it was inevitable that one of the old racist dinosaurs would make a pathetic squeal in an attempt to preserve the status quo….
Mr Judd and his “matauranga Maori is not science” friends can go die quietly in the corner…
What sort of lawyers will be produced by a law faculty led by someone who resorts to petty abuse instead of engaging in rational argument?
Why did she not explain why tikanga is law? Why did she not explain why a body of law built up over centuries for the purpose of testing whether a custom should be accorded the status of law must be jettisoned because tikanga cannot meet those standards? Why did she not answer other matters raised in my complaint to the regulations review committee? Responses like those could have been expected from a person holding a privileged leadership position. As it is not the response given, the inference may be drawn that she does not have answers which support her position.
The law school deans are members of the Council for legal education. Ms Quince became interim dean in 2021. Presumably that means she was one of those responsible for this breach of the human rights of potential law students. Whilst compelling those who wish to be lawyers to have sufficient knowledge of criminal law, the law of contract, torts and so on is a limitation on their freedoms, it is a limitation which can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. If a person wishes to engage in the practice of law, they must be possessed of adequate competence in the core legal subjects. It is a quite different thing to compel them to receive indoctrination in a system of beliefs and values held by one section of the community.
Ms Quince has such absolute conviction in the rightness of her position that she will happily employ compulsion instead of reason and those who disagree must “go die quietly in the corner.”
To those wishing to take up law, I say try to find a university with a faculty whose leadership has greater respect for the tradition of law as a reasoning discipline.
This article was first published at Gary Judd's substack, Thoughts from the North