‘Explosion of ideas’: how Māori concepts are being incorporated into New Zealand law

Inclusion of Mori legal customs could profoundly alter the way law is applied in areas as diverse as defamation and trust law

When English settlers first arrived in New Zealand, they brought with them pests, diseases and England's common law. Indigenous Mori already had legal customs in the form of tikanga, a set of rules and principles which governed daily life. But the settlers dismissed Mori as savages" and tikanga as primitive. As their power grew, so did the common law's. Eventually, though many Mori still followed tikanga, it was pushed to the legal margins.

That is starting to change. In 2020 New Zealand's supreme court allowed a dead man's appeal to continue, apparently on the basis that his mana (the Mori concept of status) continues to fluctuate after death. This year the court quashed a mining company's appeal over a resource consent application partly on the basis that it was inconsistent with tikanga.