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.

Inequality

“In order to make people equal, you have to treat them differently. If you treat people alike, so far as government is concerned, the result is necessarily inequality.

"You can have either freedom and inequality, or unfreedom and equality.”

~ Friedrich Hayek

Are human rights a gift from government?

"Roy, a commenter on my 'Lessons from Iran,' says there is no such thing as human rights: 'Human rights [he says] are given and allowed by Governments.' ...

"If Roy is right, it means that the Iranian people do not have the right to life or liberty because the government of Iran has not given and allowed them to have those rights. By way of an opposite example, it also means that New Zealanders have those rights only because the government has given them to us or allowed us to have them. ...

"John Locke (1632-1704) produced the rationale for certain rights to exist independently of any expression of them in government legislation or the common law. I go into detail below, but the essence is that human beings have certain characteristics which differentiate them from other living things, characteristics which demand of each person that they allow every other person to live their own lives without forcing them or attempting to force them to act or not to act in a particular way.

"That means each person has the right to be left alone and each person has the reciprocal obligation to leave everyone else alone.

"This is a moral imperative, and humans may occasionally or habitually refuse or fail to act in that way. That’s why we have laws proscribing certain conduct. ...

"Humans cannot sustain and live their lives in the uniquely human way unless they are free to do so. Freedom is the fundamental ‘human’ right. It subsumes the right to life because if the individual’s freedom is respected, so also his life will not be in jeopardy from others’ aggressions. It subsumes the right to pursue happiness because if the individual is free, he is free to pursue happiness so long as in doing so he does not trample on others’ freedom.

"The caveat “so long as in doing so he does not trample on others’ freedom,” is vital. It is why so many so-called rights are bogus because, for example, they involve taking from others thereby violating the others’ right to be free."

~ Gary Judd from his post 'Human rights: are they real? Or are they just a gift of the government?'

"There may be damage – serious damage – to public trust and confidence in the Police when the rot and corruption are present at such a high level."

"The Rule of Law is one of the foundational principles of constitutional democracy. ... Its essence is that law—not individuals—governs the polity, and that all exercises of public power must be rooted in, constrained by, and accountable to the law. ... Public officials—from Ministers to constables—must act within and according to the legal powers Parliament or the Constitution grants.

"All individuals—from Prime Ministers to ordinary citizens—are equally subject to the law. ...

"The Rule of Law constrains Government power and ensures that majorities cannot act outside legal limits.

"It protects individual rights and freedoms. ...

"But the Rule of Law goes beyond the institutional realm. It operates through a culture of legality. It requires respect for legal norms by citizens and officials, habitual compliance by state actors, a commitment to constitutionalism, openness to scrutiny, and entrenched expectations of fair process. ... At the front line of the Rule of Law in our society are the Police and the Courts. Both rely on public trust and confidence for their continued legitimacy. ...

"Society expects the highest standards of its police officers from the constable on the beat to the Commissioner’s office in Wellington. And when those standards are not present there must be an almost automatic erosion of public confidence in the Police.

"Indeed the Police force has had its problems recently. A failure by Police to alert the Beehive when a press secretary’s phone was found at a brothel; more than 100 police recruits who had been allowed to start training despite failing fitness and language tests; that over the last 5 years a total of 159 serving police officers have been charged with crimes including serious family violence and sexual offending – none have been dismissed. In October 2025 it was revealed that more than 100 officers are under investigation for falsifying breath tests.

"And it is clear, from the McSkimming scandal, that the rot was at the highest level. ...

"[Quite] apart from the various other elements of cover-up and evasiveness on the part of the Police top brass there was their use of the Courts to prosecute a complainant and use Court processes to further the cover-up.

"There may be damage – serious damage – to public trust and confidence in the Police when the rot and corruption are present at such a high level. But in addition the activities of these officers challenges some fundamentals that underpin their independence and the Rule of Law.

"Like it or not another institution central to the Rule of Law that depends on public trust and confidence – the Courts – has become involved. ...

"Ultimately, public confidence depends on citizens seeing the courts and the Police as fair, impartial, and accessible - institutions that reflect their values while standing above politics and corruption.

"Without that faith the Police are no more than a paper tiger, distrusted and to be avoided in times of trouble.

"Without that faith, the judiciary’s moral authority—the only sword it wields—grows dangerously blunt.

"And in either case, the Rule of Law suffers."

~ Cranmer from his post 'Public Confidence and the Rule of 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."

"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]

"The excessive and inappropriate use of name suppression"

"I make no secret of my hatred of the excessive and inappropriate use of name suppression in New Zealand. In particular, I am infuriated by the number of sex offenders who are given name suppression because people knowing about their offending would cause some kind of unjust hardship. ... The system should not be mitigating against natural justice. ...

"How dare the system, and those in it, prevent the victims of sexual violence from speaking about what happened to them. How dare anyone tell them they cannot point at their convicted assaulter and say 'that man did it to me!'” 

~ Ani O’Brien from her post 'Win for victims: New law puts survivors at the centre of justice'

"A rāhui has no legal standing. It is a cultural practice, not law."

 

"Over the weekend, the Otago Daily Times ran a story with the headline 'Rāhui in place after body found on Wairau Bar'  ... quot[ing] a post made by local iwi on Facebook:  'In recognition of this mate, and to support the whānau pani, a rāhui was placed on Sunday morning by representatives from Rangitāne o Wairau, Ngāti Toa Rangatira and Ngāti Rārua.' ...

[T]he rāhui [reportedly] “covers an area from the Ōpaoa and Wairau River confluence to the Wairau River mouth and prohibits the collecting of food and anyone entering the water.”

"That word 'prohibits' ... makes it sound like a legal ban, as though iwi now hold legislative power to dictate who can fish, dive or swim in our waters. A rāhui has no legal standing. It is a cultural practice, not law. No one can actually stop you from going about your day, whether that’s fishing, collecting seafood, or going for a swim.

"When did Māori iwi become the arbiters of who may and may not enter the water? Two hundred years ago, when food was scarce and survival depended on gathering kai from the sea, would the same blanket bans have been placed? If someone drowned, was the whole coastline suddenly closed off to the hapū and iwi who relied on it to eat?

"Of course, everyone should respect grieving families. However, there is a difference between mourning and dictating. Wrapping prohibition in cultural language does not change the fact that rāhui is not legally enforceable."

~ Matua Kahurangi from his post 'Enough of this rāhui bullshit'

"Trump might see several advantages to engineering a dramatic showdown in a city and state run by his political enemies."

"President Trump has deployed the National Guard, along with several hundred marines, to Los Angeles — despite the objections of California Governor Gavin Newsom. ... the first time a president has invoked this authority since Lyndon Johnson sent them in to protect civil rights protesters in Alabama in 1965... The circumstances in Trump’s case are dramatically different, and it’s far from clear that his decision meets the legal standard for federalising Guard troops. ... The protests over the weekend weren’t even particularly large, numbering in the hundreds, rather than the thousands, most of whom were demonstrating peacefully. ...Trump’s response was unprecedented in recent American history. ...

"Trump might see several advantages to engineering a dramatic showdown in a city and state run by his political enemies.

"He also probably wants to posture for his base as a tough and decisive leader. ... The incentive to pander to his base might be particularly strong in this case because the underlying issue is immigration. ... but his administration has struggled to deport anything like th[e millions promised] By sending the marines to Los Angeles to stop protesters from blocking ICE vans, perhaps Trump is seeking to symbolically compensate for the gap between rhetoric and reality.

"There are other plausible explanations which are far more disturbing. Is Trump hoping that inflaming tensions will provoke a violent response from Angelenos extreme enough to justify seizing further emergency powers? Or could it be a trial balloon: an opportunity for Trump to gauge how much authoritarianism he can get away? That would fit the pattern of the rest of his second term, during which he has sent deportees to a prison in El Salvador without trial, and ignored a judge’s explicit order to turn back deportation flights that were already in the air. ...

"Something similar might be going on here. While senior White House aide Stephen Miller has explicitly used the word 'insurrection' to describe events in Los Angeles, Trump has so far stopped short of using the i-word. ...Even so, this sets a precedent: that marines can be sent to sites of domestic unrest. And this might make the public and the press a bit less rattled if Trump ever does invoke the Insurrection Act in the future.

"Trump, though, tends to act on impulse. Few presidents have been lessconsistent in their decision making: administration officials and advisors come and go, the President’s moods change, and everyone has to scramble to keep up. But while he fumbles in the dark, acting on instinct, many of those instincts are deeply authoritarian. Testing how far he can push the limits of presidential power is par for the course."

~ Ben Burgis from his op-ed 'Trump is testing Los Angeles'

Q: Why do we need the concept of 'citizenship'?

"It's time for Ayn Rand's Power Question: What facts of reality give rise to the need for such a concept as X?

"Here, X is 'citizenship.' Why do we need this concept? Mainly, to determine who can vote. You can probably think of a few perquisites that attend to attaining the status of 'citizen.' But that status has nothing to do with the rights of man.

"The territory within the boundaries of a given country is the area in which its law has jurisdiction, the area in which a specific government, by its apparatus of compulsion, maintains a de jure and de facto monopoly on the use of physical force.

"We used to discuss whether the police, in a voluntarily financed laissez-faire nation, would protect the rights of non-contributors against criminals. The answer was: yes, mainly because the thug who would assault anyone is a threat to everyone, including the contributors. The 'yes' answer follows from practical, moral, and symbolic considerations. Defending the rights and freedom of everyone currently in the country is symbolic of a government devoted to justice.

"The same considerations that require the government protect the rights of non-contributors apply to protecting the rights of non-citizens. ...

"But due process and all the safeguards are there to rein in and make safer everybody who faces the possibility of government interference. The safeguards are there to eliminate arbitrary power.

"Government is potentially a far bigger threat than criminals.

"To introduce a preserve within which government agents can exercise unsupervised power is a threat that dwarfs that of any gang of hoodlums (citizens or non-citizens).

"And this is what we are seeing with Trump's every action—the quest for arbitrary power, unconstrained by checks and balances or anything other than the will of Donald Trump.

"If Trump doesn't have to follow due process in regard to non-citizens, does he have to follow it in regard to determining whether or not the person is a citizen? That's not theoretical. That's today's headlines.

"It can't be repeated too often: the solution to crime is not "screening" or "roundups" of anyone; it's repeal of the drug laws.

"It can't be repeated too often: the solution to lawless behavior by immigrants is not lawless behavior by the police.

"You can avoid a criminal gang; you can even move to a different locale. You can't avoid a SWAT team, the FBI, or any part of the state's apparatus of compulsion and incarceration."

~ Harry Binswanger from his post 'A sense of proportion'

"I cannot see how anyone could possibly object to a bill committing our country to racial equality and to the sovereignty of Parliament"

"I myself cannot see how anyone could possibly object to a bill committing our country to racial equality and to the sovereignty of the Crown and Parliament.
    "Nor can I see any constitutional objection to our sovereign parliament — the very parliament that has made reference over the years to the ‘principles of the Treaty’ — taking the logical and necessary next step of explaining what those principles are.
    "Nor can I see any objection to leaving the final decision on the matter to a referendum of ordinary citizens ~ whom we do, after all, trust every three years to decide on our rulers for the next Parliamentary term....
    "Nevertheless, some people obviously do object to this bill. Unless they occupy a different reality, however, they must be aware that the bill is, rightly or wrongly, strongly supported by very many other New Zealanders. That is an undoubted and indisputable fact. Those New Zealanders supporting the bill may be misguided, but the fact of their support is absolutely clear. ...
    "[Some objectors argue] that since governments since 1987 ‘have abdicated responsibility’ for interpreting [sections of law containing these principles], that job has been left to the courts — which has now led, allegedly, to ‘clear understandings’ of what [such a section] means. [For example,] that ‘[t]his Act shall so be interpreted and administered as to give effect to the principles of the Treaty…’ ...
    "[Some objectors complain] that governments have ‘abdicated responsibility’ for interpreting [these 'principles' sections], but also complain that Parliament, by this bill, is attempting to interpret the section! [They] cannot have it both ways. Surely Mr Seymour’s bill is an acceptance — not before time! — of Parliament’s responsibility to say what the principles of the Treaty are."

~ David Round from his article 'The Decline of Conservation'

"Trump’s administration has quickly moved beyond normal policy disputes into the realm of constitutional crisis." [update 2]

"Trump’s administration has quickly moved beyond normal policy disputes into the realm of constitutional crisis. His claim of authority to override courts, ignore Congress, and rule by decree presents Americans with a stark choice: They can defend their constitutional system, with all its frustrating checks and balances, or they can embrace an authoritarian leader who promises to impose their preferred policies by force.
    "The former path preserves liberty, even when policies disappoint. The latter leads, inevitably, to tyranny. Those who think Trump’s authoritarianism serves conservative ends should remember that power, once unleashed, outlives its wielder. The precedent Trump seeks to set would be available to every future President — including those with very different ideological aims.
    "America’s founders created a system of checks and balances precisely to prevent the concentration of power they had fled in Europe. They knew that liberty depends not on the character of individual leaders, but on binding all leaders within constitutional constraints.
    "That system now faces its greatest test since the Civil War."

~ Roger Partridge from his op-ed 'Trump’s War on Constitutional Democracy'

UPDATE 1: James Allan, a colleague of Roger Partridge's and a former Otago law professor —and normally one of the good guys — pushes back against Partridge's column. "Silly," he calls it. "Sensible," I would have said.

UPDATE 2: Partridge responds: "While Jim [Allan] and I share deep concerns about judicial activism and bureaucratic overreach, his attempt to normalise Trump’s recent actions ignores their unprecedented assault on constitutional government.

"Take Trump’s approach to executive orders. Jim notes that Joe Biden issued more orders early in his term. But this comparison misses the point entirely. The issue is not quantity but substance — Trump consistently invokes emergency powers to override Congress, courts and the Constitution itself.
    "His declaration of a 'border invasion' to suspend asylum rights exemplifies this overreach. Rather than work with Congress to reform immigration law, Trump simply decreed that America’s legal obligations to asylum seekers no longer apply. This is not normal policy implementation. It is rule by executive fiat."

John Adams famously called a republic “a government of laws, not of men.” The end result here would replace the rule of law by overruling legal restraints by the man on the top..

'Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning'

"The suggestion that colonial systems are based on white supremacy is a generalisation that infects much of the debate about colonialism and colonisation. It suggests that 'white supremacy' ... was what motivated colonialism and colonisation. It did not, although there were times when, during the colonial experience, it manifested itself. ...
    "In 2017, [Nigel] Biggar initiated a five-year project at Oxford University ... to scrutinise critiques against the historical facts of empire. Historians and academics widely criticised the project ... 
    "Biggar’s book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, examines the morality of colonialism. ... conced[ing] in the Introduction to the book that the subject matter and his approach were both contentious. ...

"Many commentators of colonialism approach the topic from a critical theory perspective, seeking out any evidence to then suggest that all colonial activity was inherently evil. Biggar does not. His is a more nuanced approach and is that of an ethicist.  ...
    'Biggar’s argument is that the development of Empire and what is called colonialism was an institution that developed over centuries and no one could say that it was wholly good or wholly bad. Biggar cites examples from other imperial activities. The empire of Islam demonstrated examples of racism regarding those from Northern climes (it was too cold to be intelligent) or the tropics (it was too hot to be intelligent). ...

"He commences with the proposition that empire is not an historical aberration or a departure from historical norms. It is part of the natural order of a world that, until recently, lacked stable frontiers formalised by an overarching scheme of international law. The armed migration of peoples in search of resources might serve to unlock the riches of the world and spread knowledge and technical competence, processes which potentially benefit all mankind.
    "Certainly colonialism severely disrupted existing patterns of indigenous life. It was often achieved or maintained through violence and injustice. In the final analysis, all states maintain themselves by force or the threat of it.
    "Governments, imperial or domestic, have always involved light and shade, achievement and failure, good and evil. Biggar’s point is that it falsifies history to collect together everything bad about an institution and serve it up as if it were the whole.

"There are three major points that Biggar makes by way of mitigation when it comes to the legacy of Empire.
    "To begin with many of the worst things that happened were not the result of an ideology or a preconceived and calculated policy. There were abuses. They were recognised and were addressed although not always with the greatest success.
    "Secondly, along with the disruption that was caused to communities there were also benefits. Practices such as slavery, cannibalism, sati and human sacrifice, which were by any standards barbarous, were eliminated. The ground was laid for an economic and social transformation that lifted much of the world out of extremes of poverty.
    "Thirdly and finally not only did colonialism bring disruption but it brought order. The British brought the Rule of Law, constitutional government, honest administration, economic development and modern educational and research facilities, all long before they would have been achieved without European intervention. ...

"There can be no doubt that the British Empire contained evils and injustices but so does the history of any long-standing state. But the Empire was not essentially racist, exploitative or wantonly violent as a general proposition. It could correct errors and sins and importantly it prepared colonised peoples for liberal self-government.
    "What colonialism did bring to the table in the final analysis were liberal, humanitarian principles and endeavours that should be admired and carried into the future. Imaginary guilt should not cripple the self confidence of the British, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders as pillars of the liberal international order."

~ A Halfling from his post 'Colonialism - A Moral Reckoning'

"...the possibility of a constitutional crisis because of the activism of some judges of New Zealand’s senior courts."

"Bryce Edwards ... has signalled the possibility of a constitutional crisis because of the activism of some judges of New Zealand’s senior courts. ...
    "In New Zealand now, we have ... a breed of judges who are not legal activists but political activists — judges who unashamedly seek to advance political agendas. In doing so, they assume the mantle of Plato’s philosopher kings, the creed of the infallible ruling elite. ... contemptuous of the people of the country, the people they pretend they are serving. ...
    "Incredibly, a number of my King’s Counsel colleagues appear to think this is okay. As part of their calling on the Prime Minister and the National Party to breach a coalition agreement by refusing a first reading and referral to a select committee of ACT’s Treaty Principles Bill, they say that 'even if Parliament can legislate in this way (which is uncertain),' the courts may not enforce it. ...
    "They need a short lesson because Parliament’s power is not uncertain. ...
    
"All lawyers, including KCs have a fundamental obligation to uphold the rule of law. ... When the KCs say it is uncertain that Parliament may legislate in this way, they mean that the courts may refuse to apply the law. Using that as an argument implies acceptance of or even advocacy for defiance of Parliament and the law of the land. How is that consistent with a fundamental obligation to uphold the rule of law?
    "What the KCs should be saying is that judges, like everyone else, must obey the law and they have by virtue of their office a special obligation to apply it."

~ Gary Judd from his post 'KCs are not a special elite'

"Seymour is only doing openly what Māori nationalists and their Pakeha allies have been doing, quietly, for the past 50 years."

"David Seymour is right. His bill might be killed at its Second Reading, but the issues he has raised will not die. ...
    "David Seymour’s great sin has been to offer an alternative to this covert effort to change the constitution of New Zealand by changing the Treaty’s historical meaning. Those who argue that the Treaty Principles Bill is a blatant attempt to re-write the Treaty are quite right. What they omit to say, however, is that Seymour is only doing openly what Māori nationalists and their Pakeha allies have been doing, quietly, in legal chambers, common-rooms, and public service offices for the past 50 years.
    "The critical difference, of course, is that Seymour was proposing to give the rest of us a vote on his version."

~ Chris Trotter from his post 'Beyond Question?'

Common Law v Statute Law

 

"[A] legal system centred on legislation [i.e. statute law] resembles ... a centralised economy in which all the relevant decisions are made by a handful oI directors, whose knowledge of the whole situation is fatally limited and whose respect, if any, of the people's wishes is subject to that limitation. ...
    "It is ... paradoxical that the very economists who support the free market at the present time do not seem to care to consider whether a free market could really last within a legal system centred on legislation. ... [T]he strict relationship between the market economy and a legal system centred on judges and]or lawyers instead of on legislation is much less clearly realised than it should be, although the equally strict relationship between a planned economy and legislation is too obvious to be ignored in its turn by scholars and people at large.
"[T]here is more than an analogy between the market economy and a common or lawyers' law, just as there is much more than an analogy between a planned economy and statute law. If one considers that the market economy was most successful both in Rome and in the Anglo-Saxon countries within the framework of, respectively, a lawyers' and a common law, the conclusion seems to be reasonable that this was not a mere coincidence."

~ Bruno Leoni, from his book Freedom and the Law, pp 21-2. [Emphases in the original.] Hat tip Michael Munger & Russ Roberts from their 'Econtalk' podcast episode on 'The Underrated Bruno Leoni'

FURTHER READING: 

• 'When Friedrich Hayek Met Bruno Leoni' - Todd Zywicki, LAW & LIBERTY

"What the U.S. system did was to democratise invention and innovation"

"The problem we have globally and historically is that innovation has usually occurred as a one-off, maybe as a flash of brilliance, but it hasn’t been able to be sustained or consistent because for most of human history and in most places in the world today, the conditions were not present to enable an investment in sustained and transformative innovation. ... What the U.S. system did was to democratise invention and innovation, to say we’re going to make rights available to anyone who can do something innovative and allow them to invest themselves, not as a hobby, not as a sideline, but as a living. ...

"[F]ive distinguishing features ... make the U.S. unique:

• the American economic approach enables risk taking and failure, fosters competition and ensures goods and services can cross state lines, 
• provides property rights, 
• is based on the rule of law, and 
• establishes markets.
• mobilising resources and making them available for investment in new areas

“You have to set those conditions where you can access all of that private capital. And then you can use it for the high risk, the high-end deliverables that really change the world. You know, those technologies for energy that are going to tackle climate change, the new cures for HIV and cancers, the new modes of food production that will, you know, feed 8 billion plus and growing people around the world.
    "The rule of law in the United States has allowed markets to operate effectively and with dynamism because 'it took all the friction out of the system.' ... When we fail to provide rule of law whether it’s in a store or at the border or in intellectual property then the system starts to break down and we don’t have those dynamic benefits of a market economy.”

~ Patrick Kilbride in conversation with Gene Quinn on 'The Case for Market Economics, Innovation and Rule of Law'

"Much of the mess we are in can be blamed, in my view, on lawyers ... "

"In [New Zealand], much of the mess we are in can be blamed, in my view, on lawyers (and judges). ...
    "It was Geoffrey Palmer, a lawyer, who designed the original Resource Management Act, and it is David Parker, a lawyer, who's currently drawing up plans to implement wealth and capital taxes as part of the Labour Party's platform for the 2026 election. The current Chair of Kiwi Rail is a lawyer. His Deputy Chair is a lawyer. Most of NZ's big firms have boards dominated by lawyers (and accountants) who have no shop-floor experience in the industry in which "their" company is working. How have they got their jobs? From what I have learned, mostly by networking & schmoozing. Is this a world-wide phenomena? No. Who do companies like Tesla have on their boards? To give you a flavor, folks like Mr. Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb, and Mr. Straubel, founder of Redwood Materials, a firm working to drive down the costs and environmental footprint of lithium-ion batteries by offering sources of anode & cathode materials from recycled batteries. ...
    "What has been the objective of those sitting in the Auckland law firms quietly earning incomes of way over $1 million a year? To maximise their fee income, of course. The legal & regulatory structures that have promoted monopoly power in NZ, the frameworks that govern race-relations, and the mountains of red-tape we all must navigate, have been made deliberately divisive, deliberately ineffective, and deliberately onerous by Kiwi lawyers, all to generate more disputes & work for law firms and their partners. The profession that has ground NZ's economy to a halt has been our legal profession — all in the name of its ... quest for higher incomes."

~ Robert MacCulloch from his post 'God Save New Zealand from Lawyers'

What's a Corporation?

"To differentiate it from a partnership, a corporation should be defined as a legal and contractual mechanism for creating and operating a business for profit, using capital from investors that will be managed on their behalf by directors and officers. To lawyers, however, the classic definition is U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall’s 1819 remark that 'a corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.' But Marshall’s definition is useless because it is a metaphor; it makes a corporation a judicial hallucination."

~ Robert Hessen, from his article 'Corporations' at the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics [hat tip David R. Henderson]

 

Overlawyered [updated]

 

Lawyers are a proxy for regulation. To get a feel for how destructive regulation is, you could maybe look at the number of lawmakers. Compared with the combined average of Denmark, Singapore, Norway, Ireland and Finland, New Zealand has 50% more Ministers, 156% more departments, and 280% more portfolios.* 

Or you could simply measure the exploding number of pages of regulations and statute law over the years and guess at how that strangles enterprise. But that would barely do full justice to its stultifying effect either. 

But just measuring lawmakers or the number of pages of legislation they produce doesn't fully measure the destructiveness of what's on those pages. A far better proxy measure is to look at the number of parasites who live off the law -- i..e, the lawyers who write, enact and feed off it. Way back in 1924 H.L. Mencken observed:

“All the extravagance and incompetence of ... Government is due, in the main, to lawyers, and, in part at least, to good ones. They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizens has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah jong factory, we’d be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half.”

He was right then. He's even more right now.

We don't have the rule of law any more, but rule by lawyers. When Mencken wrote that in 1924, New Zealand had roughly one lawyer per 1,000 people. We now have nearly three times that number — and we're less free, less safe, and our taxes have increased at least tenfold.

The number of lawyers in the country is a proxy for our level of (over)regulation, of the extent to which we're being strangled by the grey ones. And look at how the blood suckers have grown, especially post-WWII. And they keep growing, with around 3% more of the bastards every year.

It's frightening.

Source: Law Society ‘Snapshot of the Profession 2020’

* 'Too complex,' Max Salmon

UPDATE: "The 54th Parliament ... has proportionately more lawyers (17), managers (44) and analysts (22) than are found in ordinary life. Almost 14% of MPs have legal work experience, compared to 0.5% of the public. The construction sector is the least represented in Parliament...." [SOURCE: 'A Parliament of office workers']

"If a group is intimidating the public, they can and should be arrested; no matter what they are wearing. If they are wearing patches and not threatening the public they should remain outside the reach of the law."

"At issue is a plan to ban gang insignia being worn in public ... A common complaint against similar laws is to ask the question; if the state is permitted to force known undesirables to change their clothes, what will stop them from forcing restrictions on the more respectable?
    "My position is more fundamental; the state should not be telling some of the worst members of our society what to wear because the state should not tell anyone what to wear. ...
    "Gangs are a form of power that operates outside the limitations we have attempted to impose on governments. ... I support most of the actions being taken to reduce their power, including membership being an aggravating feature at sentencing and non-association orders where there is some judicial oversight. Of course, being a libertarian columnist, I’d be delighted to see the end of drug prohibition, which is what gives these groups their economic power. ...
    "But I cannot bring myself to accept a ban on gang livery.
    "If a group is intimidating the public, they can and should be arrested; no matter what they are wearing. If they are wearing patches and not threatening the public they should remain outside the reach of the law.
    "It is intolerable to uphold the liberties that we expect for ourselves to those who would delight in our destruction. I do not deny this; nor the human desire bring these people to heel.
    "But because we can, does not mean we should ..."

~ Damien Grant, from his column ''The state should not tell anyone what to wear'