In Aotearoa New Zealand, the state legal system is increasingly drawing on aspects of Māori law. Recent decisions suggest that the courts are willing to consider Māori law as a source of New Zealand law. This marks a change from earlier approaches which recognised discrete customary practices as customary law. Questions of state recognition of customary law have tended to focus attention on common law tests and so obscure processes of the Indigenous legal system, the sources of Indigenous law, and Indigenous forms of legal reasoning and communication. This article suggests that by focusing instead on understanding the application of Māori law within a fuller cultural context, the New Zealand courts may be better able to reveal and understand the Indigenous legal principles and processes at work. This would include engaging with a different range of legal sources, including working with Māori stories as legal texts, to make visible aspects of Indigenous law that can help to drive developments in the state legal system.
The article proposes a method of teaching Administrative Law that engages with the historical and political impact of administrative decisions on Indigenous peoples and their cultures while still addressing the traditional doctrinal concerns of an Administrative Law course. The article begins by explaining what it understands by the concept of an ‘Indigenous perspective’, and identifying how such perspectives can be incorporated into a law degree. It then outlines the potential role of Administrative Law as a vehicle for incorporating an Indigenous perspective, explaining the pedagogical benefits of expanding Administrative Law courses in this way
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