Juridical Encounters Maori and the Colonial Courts, 1840-1852

From 1840 to 1852, the Crown Colony period, the British attempted to impose their own law on New Zealand. In theory Maori, as subjects of the Queen, were to be ruled by British law. But in fact, outside the small, isolated, British settlements, most Maori and many settlers lived according to tikanga. How then were Maori to be brought under British law? Influenced by the idea of exceptional laws that was circulating in the Empire, the colonial authorities set out to craft new regimes and new courts through which Maori would be encouraged to forsake tikanga and to take up the laws of the settlers.

Shaunnagh Dorsett is Professor of Law at the University of Technology Sydney and Research Fellow in the Faculty of Law at Victoria University of Wellington. She is the author or editor of a number of books, including Law and Politics in British Colonial Thought: Transpositions of Empire; Jurisdiction; and Legal Histories of the British Empire: Laws, Engagements and Legacies. She was the leader of the New Zealand Law Foundation’s ‘Lost Cases’ Project.