pgm13@cam.ac.uk
Professor Emeritus of Law & Legal History
CV / Biography
LL.B. (Hons), first class, from Victoria University of Wellington (NZ); LL.M. (“The Management of Native Lands in Canada and New Zealand: A Comparison”) from the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada; Ph.D. (Cantab.) 1988 (awarded Yorke Prize 1989). Fellow of Sidney Sussex College 1984 - . Extensive publications in the field of common-law aboriginal rights; constitutional (imperial and colonial) history and historiography. Citation by courts (most recently and prominently, New Zealand's foreshore and seabed controversy (2003 -), also Takamore v Clark [2011] NZCA 587; Ross River Dena Council v A.-G (Canada) 2012 YKSC 4) and as leading expert witness for the defendants in the 'Urewera Four Trial' (2012) (billed as New Zealand's most expensive criminal trial).
He is working on a new multi-volume project Albion's Sceptre: Office and Prerogative in the Constitutional Culture of the Early Modern British Empire. During the early modern period, the British often applauded theirs as an Empire of Law. Yet for all the self-congratutory there was little our understanding of how this Empire was founded upon and articulated a sense of its own lawfulness. The book will look at the imperial prerogative and its deployment in a variety of historical (and geographical) settings and the 'presuppositions' of office by which British authorities constituted lawfulness at home and, more especially, abroad. The book will look at the intensification of office and the marshalling of emergent notions of subjecthood during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century with the rise of the fiscal-military British state. Office entailed more than imperial counter-practice to rights-based legalism iof a French and American sort but also provided a frame for the myriad streams of discursive practice of this period and their contesting, ranging from the Parliamentary impeachments of Hastings, Dundas, vilificaton of the Norman Yoke, through those of politeness and gentility. The dynamic in the history of (British and imperial) public law in this period was not that of law a higher-order, external abstraction nor driven by any modish constitutional doctrine of the separation of powers. Rather, public law thought (still mostly inside the era of personal kingship) treated law as an embodiment rather than as an abstraction. Parliamentary intervention was largely to shore up the imperial prerogative and was one sphere where (in the period between the Bill of Rights 1689 and the accession of Victoria 1837) the Whig imagery of a gradual whittling down was largely inapplicable.
Extensive presentations and public lectures in the UK and abroad (Canada and New Zealand especially), including practitioners' workshops.
Selected publications
Books
Aboriginal Societies and the Common Law, 2004)
Publisher:
ISBN 13:
978-0-19-825248-1
The aboriginal rights of the New Zealand Maori at common law (with introduction by Professor Graham Smith), 2012)
Publisher:
Aboriginal Title: The Modern Jurisprudence of Tribal Land Rights, 2011)
The Maori Magna Carta. New Zealand Law and the Treaty of Waitangi, 1991)
Publisher:
Articles
"Sovereignty in Australasia: Comparatively Different Histories" (2009) 13 Legal History 55
Citation:
(2009) 13 Legal History 55
Published: Sep 2009
""Aboriginal Title: Travelling from (or to?) an Antique Land?”" (2015) 48:3 University of British Columbia Law Review 793-820
Citation:
(2015) 48:3 University of British Columbia Law Review 793-820
Published: Oct 2016
""The Crown’s relationship with tribal peoples and the legal dynamics for the resolution of historical and contemporary claims” " (2015) 46 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 875.
Citation:
(2015) 46 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 875.
Published: Sep 2015
""Time whereof – Memory, History and Law in the Jurisprudence of Aboriginal Rights”" (2014) 77:2 University of Saskatchewan Law Review 207-240
Citation:
(2014) 77:2 University of Saskatchewan Law Review 207-240
Published: Sep 2014
"Sovereignty in Australasia: Comparatively Different Histories" (2009) 13:1 Legal History 57 - 92.
Citation:
(2009) 13:1 Legal History 57 - 92.
Published: Jan 2010
"Mike Taggart: In Memoriam" (2009) 7 New Zealand Journal of Public and International law 185 – 188.
Citation:
(2009) 7 New Zealand Journal of Public and International law 185 – 188.
Published: Jan 2010
""Sir John Salmond and the moral agency of the state"" (2007) 38 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 743-70
Citation:
(2007) 38 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 743-70
Published: Dec 2007
""’Treaty Principles": Constitutional relations inside a conservative jurisprudence"" (2007) 38 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 39-72 (Memorial edition for the late Lord Robin Cooke of Thorndon).
Citation:
(2007) 38 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 39-72 (Memorial edition for the late Lord Robin Cooke of Thorndon).
Published: Dec 2007
""New Dawn to Cold Light: Courts and Common Law Aboriginal Rights"" [2005] New Zealand Law Review 485 – 532 [published also in Bigwood, ed Public Interest Litigation, infra]
Citation:
[2005] New Zealand Law Review 485 – 532 [published also in Bigwood, ed Public Interest Litigation, infra]
Published: Aug 2005
""Setting the Statutory Compass: The Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004"" (2005) 3 New Zealand Journal of Public and International Law 255-83
Citation:
(2005) 3 New Zealand Journal of Public and International Law 255-83
Published: Mar 2005
""What a difference a Treaty makes – the pathway of aboriginal rights jurisprudence in New Zealand public law"" (2004) 15 Public Law Review 87-102.
Citation:
(2004) 15 Public Law Review 87-102.
Published: Sep 2004
""Aboriginal Title in New Zealand: A Retrospect and Prospect"" (2004) 2 New Zealand Journal of Public and International Law 139-202
Citation:
(2004) 2 New Zealand Journal of Public and International Law 139-202
Published: Mar 2004
""Tales of constitutional origin and Crown sovereignty in New Zealand"" (2002), 52 University of Toronto Law Journal pp 69 – 99.
Citation:
(2002), 52 University of Toronto Law Journal pp 69 – 99.
Published: Mar 2002
""Sovereignty this century – Maori and the common law constitution"" (2000), 31 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review pp 187-214 (law school centenary edition)
Citation:
(2000), 31 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review pp 187-214 (law school centenary edition)
Published: Jun 2000
""The common law status of colonies and aboriginal 'rights': how lawyers and historians treat the past"" (1998), 61(2) Saskatchewan Law Review 393 - 429. Reprinted 2014 in DelMar & Lobban (eds) Legal Theory and Legal History Vol 4 (Ashgate, Essays in Contemporary Legal Theory, 2nd series)
Citation:
(1998), 61(2) Saskatchewan Law Review 393 - 429. Reprinted 2014 in DelMar & Lobban (eds) Legal Theory and Legal History Vol 4 (Ashgate, Essays in Contemporary Legal Theory, 2nd series)
Published: Mar 1998
""Law, History and the Treaty of Waitangi"" (1997), 31 New Zealand Journal of History 38-52
Citation:
(1997), 31 New Zealand Journal of History 38-52
Published: Jul 1997
""Constitutional Voices"" (1996), 26 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 499-529.
Citation:
(1996), 26 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 499-529.
Published: Mar 1996
""The legal basis of Maori claims against the Crown"" (1988) 18 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 1-20.
Citation:
(1988) 18 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 1-20.
Published: Mar 1988
""Aboriginal servitudes and the Land Transfer Act 1952"" (1986), 16 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 313-335.
Citation:
(1986), 16 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 313-335.
Published: Mar 1986
""Maori Fishing Rights and the North American Indian"" (1985) 6 Otago Law Review 62-94.
Citation:
(1985) 6 Otago Law Review 62-94.
Published: Mar 1985
""The legal status of Maori fishing rights in tidal water"" (1984), 14 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review pp. 247-73
Citation:
(1984), 14 Victoria University of Wellington Law Review pp. 247-73
Published: May 1984
""Aboriginal title in New Zealand courts"" (1984), 2 University of Canterbury Law Review 235-265.
Citation:
(1984), 2 University of Canterbury Law Review 235-265.
Published: Apr 1984
Book Chapters
"Imperial Law – the Legal Historian and the Trials and Tribulations of an Imperial Past" in Markus Drubber and Chris Tomlins (ed(s)), The Oxford Handbook of Legal History, 2018), pp. 883-902
"A Comporting Sovereign, Tribes, and the Ordering of Imperial Authority in Colonial Upper Canada of the 1830s" in M Koskenniemi, W Rech, MJ Fonseca (ed(s)), International Law and Empire: Historical Explorations, 2016), pp. 225-261
"Anthropology on Trial: the Hindmarsh Island Bridge controversy (1993 – 2001)" (with n/a) in PG McHugh (ed(s)), Comparative Law and Anthropology (Research Handbooks in Comparative Law series), 2017), pp. 10
"A Common Law Biography of Section 35" (with n/a), From Recognition to Reconciliation: Essays on the Constitutional Entrenchment of Aboriginal and Treaty Right , 2016), pp. 27
""‘The most decorous veil which legal ingenuity can weave’: Britain’s imperial constitution and the annexation of New Zealand (1840)"" (with Kelly Grotke and Markus Prutsch, editors), Constitutionalism, Legitimacy, and Power: Nineteenth-Century Experiences, 2014), pp. 300-320
"Settler Sovereignty and the Shape-shifting Crown" (with Tim Rowse and Lisa Ford), Between Indigenous and Settler Governance, 2014), pp. 23-34
""A Pretty Gov[ernment]!": The ‘Confederation of United Tribes’ and Britain’s quest for imperial order in the New Zealand islands during the 1830s"" (with Lauren Benton and Richard Ross), Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500-1850, 2013), pp. 233-260
"The Politics of Historiography and the Taxonomies of the Colonial Past: Law, History and the Tribes" (with C Stebbings and A Musson, editors), Making Legal History: Approaches and Methodology, 2012), pp. 164-195
Publisher:
Pages:
164-195
Published Jun 2012
""William Pember Reeves (1857-1932): Lawyer-Politician, Historian and ‘Rough Architect of the New Zealand State"" (with Shaunnagh Dorsett and Ian Hunter, editors), Law and Politics in British Colonial Thought – Transpositions of Empire, 2010), pp. 187-208
Publisher:
Pages:
187-208
Published Nov 2010
"The Property Rights of Tribes" (with Martin Dixon), Modern Studies in Property Law Volume 5, 2009), pp. 433-472
Publisher:
Pages:
433-472
ISBN 13:
978-1841139609
Published Dec 2009
"A History of the Modern Jurisprudence of Aboriginal Rights – Some Observations on the Journey So Far" (with D Dyzenhaus, M Hunt and G Huscroft), A Simple Common Lawyer: Essays in Honour of Michael Taggart, 2009), pp. 209-232
Publisher:
Pages:
209-232
ISBN 13:
978-1841139234
Published Feb 2009
"New Dawn to Cold Light: Courts and Common Law Aboriginal Rights" (with Bigwood, Rick), Public Interest Litigation, 2006), pp. 25-68
"Living with Rights Aboriginally: Constitutionalism and Maori in the 1990s" (with Michael Belgrave, Mereta Kawharu and David Williams), Waitangi Revisited – Perspectives on the Treaty of Waitangi, 2004), pp. 283-307
"A History of Crown Sovereignty" (with Andrew Sharp and PG McHugh), Histories, Power and Loss – Uses of the Past – A New Zealand Commentary, 2001), pp. 189-211
"From Sovereignty Talk to Settlement Time: the constitutional setting of aboriginal claims in the 1990s" (with Paul Havemann), Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, 1999), pp. 447-467
"Australasian Narratives of Constitutional Foundation" (with K Neumann, N Thomas and H Ericksen), Quicksands – Foundational Histories in Australia and New Zealand, 1999), pp. 98-114
"A Tribal Encounter: The Presence and Properties of Common Law Language in the Discourse of Colonisation in the Early-Modern Period" (with Jonathan Lamb and Alex Calder), Voyages and Beaches Pacific Encounters, 1769-1840, 1999), pp. 114-131
""Aboriginal Identity and Relations in North America and Australasia"" (with P Sarr), Kokiri Ngatahi: Living Relationships - The Treaty of Waitangi in the New Millenium, 1998), pp. 107-186
"Contractualism and Co-existence in an Inter-cultural Context: The Management of Crown Relations with Aboriginal Peoples" (with G Davis and A Yeatman), The New Contractualism, 1997), pp. 198-216
"The Historiography of New Zealand's Constitutional History" (with PA Joseph), Essays on the Constitution, 1995), pp. 344-367
"The lawyer's concept of sovereignty and a legal history for New Zealand" (with W Renwick), Sovereignty and Indigenous Rights, 1991), pp. 170-189
"Legal reasoning and the Treaty of Waitangi" (with Graham Oddie), Justice, Ethics and New Zealand Society, 1990), pp. 137-58
"Constitutional theory and aboriginal claims" (with IH Kawharu), Waitangi: Maori and Pakeha Perspectives in the Treaty of Waitangi, 1989), pp. 25-63
Conference Papers
"A comporting sovereign and the legalism of imperial authority: the ‘unremitted solicitude’ of Crown protection and transitional tribalism in colonial Upper Canada of the 1830s" (International Law, Religion and Empire, led by Professor Martti Koskenniemi (Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, University of Helsinki, and funded by the Academy of Finland) [publication 2015] presented Berlin, Apr 2014)
Conference:
International Law, Religion and Empire, led by Professor Martti Koskenniemi (Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, University of Helsinki, and funded by the Academy of Finland) [publication 2015] presented Berlin
Published: Apr 2014
"Time whereof – Memory, History and Law in the jurisprudence of aboriginal rights" (Centennial Lecture, Law Society of Saskatchewan, publication forthcoming Saskatchewan Law Review, Oct 2013)
Conference:
Centennial Lecture, Law Society of Saskatchewan, publication forthcoming Saskatchewan Law Review
Published: Oct 2013
"Whitefella's property: section 35, Constitution Act 1982 (Canada) and the proprietary paradigm"" (Paper presented to the ‘35@30’ Conference commemorating thirty years of the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal rights in the Canadian Constitution, Oct 2012)
Conference:
Paper presented to the ‘35@30’ Conference commemorating thirty years of the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal rights in the Canadian Constitution
Published: Oct 2012
""A Pretty Gov.!": The ‘Confederation of United Tribes’ and Britain’s quest for imperial order in the New Zealand islands during the 1830s" (Paper presented at "New Perspectives on Legal Pluralism" Friday, 23 April 2010, Newberry Library, Chicago, Oct 2010)
Conference:
Paper presented at "New Perspectives on Legal Pluralism" Friday, 23 April 2010, Newberry Library, Chicago
Published: Oct 2010
"‘The most decorous veil which legal ingenuity can weave’: the British annexation of New Zealand (1840)" (presented to The Research Project Europe 1815-1914: Working Group Constitutions and Legitimisation of Power, University of Helsinki in May 2010 (for re-presentation April 2011)., Oct 2010)
Conference:
presented to The Research Project Europe 1815-1914: Working Group Constitutions and Legitimisation of Power, University of Helsinki in May 2010 (for re-presentation April 2011).
Published: Oct 2010
Facebook 
X/Twitter 
Instagram 
YouTube 
Flickr 
LinkedIn