A comparative perspective on reforming the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act

Abstract

As an academic comparative constitutional lawyer, I come to the recent Constitutional Advisory Panel report and the issue of whether and how the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 (NZBORA) should be reformed from a particular – perhaps idiosyncratic – perspective. This is viewing the NZBORA as an influential version of a new general model of constitutionalism. This model grants to legislatures ultimate responsibility for the resolution of controversial rights issues while at the same time seeking to improve the rights sensitivity of the legislative process and increasing the rights protective powers of courts as compared with the traditional institutional form of parliamentary supremacy.