1,721,076 research outputs found
Keeping It In The Family: Police Perpetrated Domestic Violence And Whether New Zealand Can Break The ‘Code Of Silence’
No full textThis thesis examines domestic violence perpetrated by police officers, otherwise known as officer-involved domestic violence (OIDV). The author is a law graduate, practising medical practitioner and OIDV survivor.
This thesis sets out to test the hypothesis that within New Zealand Police (NZP) exists a ‘code of silence’ (“the Code”), shared with and understood by police departments worldwide, acting as a severe obstacle in controlling police misconduct and achieving police accountability. The Code places victims in a unique position, facing not only obstacles to reporting since their partner is a police officer, but inappropriate and biased complaint investigation. The thesis tests whether current offender and victim management is adequate to address the insidious combination of domestic violence and the occupational context in which it exists within NZP.
The author begins by examining what makes an abusive officer and causes them to excel at OIDV. The scale of the problem within New Zealand is explored, together with the initiation yet swift abandonment by NZP of the ‘Lighthouse Project’ in 2019, designed to address a steady increase in reported family harm incidents involving Police. Several New Zealand cases are then analysed before current family violence models, and those specific to OIDV are critically discussed. Measures to combat OIDV are explored, including legislation enacted by Washington State requiring police to adopt OIDV-specific policies, reported data and surveys examining the issue's extent. Legal duties pertinent to OIDV are explored before common themes, as repeated patterns in police families worldwide are described. Critical appraisal concerning whether current policies and procedures are adequate to address OIDV is undertaken and suggestions made where improvements are required to break the Code. Specifically, the New Zealand Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct, independent review into bullying and harassment in Police, and recent Independent Police Conduct Association (IPCA) review are examined as to whether they support the Code is alive and well and may indicate measures for adoption combating OIDV.
The author questions the arguably softer approach in OIDV regarding penalties, name and occupation suppression and superannuation entitlements. Where relevant, responses are sought from NZP, the IPCA, and the New Zealand Police Association (NZPA)
Contract Law, Contracting and Instrumentalism
No full textThis essay in an edited book, which the author was invited to contribute, discusses the relationship between contract law and the practice of contracting with reference to John Gava’s critique of John Smillie’s account of the purpose of contract law
Becoming an Imaginary Friend: A New Paradigm for Lawyers Representing Children in Day-to-Day Care Cases
No full textThe role of lawyers for children in day-to-day care, or custody, cases has been the subject of debate and confusion for decades. The attempts to provide guidance all get stuck in the same place; they start from the assumption that the lawyer’s first, and sometimes only, duty is advocacy. They oscillate between client-directed representation and best interests representation. Moreover, the guidance always starts from the lawyer’s perspective. It asks, “what is the role of the lawyer for the child?” This thesis presents a new model and inverts the question. This thesis asks lawyers to see their role from the child’s perspective.
Accordingly, this thesis looks at how the guidance has gotten stuck and what makes representing children in day-to-day care cases so unique that it has engendered such debate and confusion for over 50 years. It looks at a variety of the guidelines in the United States and the history of the role in New Zealand. New Zealand provides a perfect case study because it has a clear trail of guidelines leading to the present. Moreover, New Zealand is the only country in the world where lawyers for children are routinely appointed in all day-to-day care cases. This long history, however, has not curbed the confusion amongst practitioners, and this thesis analyses a survey of lawyers for children in New Zealand demonstrating they remain confused about their role and the child’s place in the system. The survey had a sample size of 55 and was administered online between May and July 2011.
This thesis, therefore, provides a new framework. It steps out of the old paradigms and asks lawyers to enter the child’s world. It presents a model of the lawyer for the child as the child’s imaginary friend. An imaginary friend serves many roles for children, but most importantly, imaginary friends understand children and help them make sense of the adult world. Imaginary friendships are one-way streets where the child benefits and learns from interacting with the imaginary friend, and then the imaginary friend can leave the child’s life having assisted the child to grow and change through a difficult time. Imaginary friends are also unique to each individual child, and they serve the needs of each child. Therefore, imaginary friends serve as a perfect model for lawyers representing children in day-to-day care cases. The conclusion of this thesis presents a new set of guidelines based upon the imaginary friend model.
Representing children in day-to-day care cases is never going to be easy, but a new model focused on each individual child’s perspectives and needs in the moment will help clarify the confusion and move the discussion beyond the decades-long stalemate
Coercive Control and the Family Court: In Whose Best Interests? Victim-survivor safety versus an abusive parent’s “right” to contact
No full textThe Care of Children Act 2004 (“COCA”) states that, “a child’s safety must be protected and, in particular, a child must be protected from all forms of violence”, however, the Family Court (“FC”) appears to favour the principle that children should continue to have a relationship with both parents; regardless of whether one of them is violent.1 Within the context of coercive control (“CC”), and from the perspective of victim-survivors2 (specifically mothers and children), this paper examines how the FC enables users of CC (specifically fathers) to continue their pattern of domination of victim-survivors post-separation in care and contact proceedings. This paper claims that, due to a lack of understanding of CC and how it differs from “typical” forms of family violence (“FV”) (such as physical and sexual abuse), the FC is not protecting mothers and children and is instead mistakenly placing more priority on a father’s “right” to have a relationship with his children.3 Not only is the FC not protecting victim-survivors, it is harming them by endorsing and encouraging the FC system to be used as a tactic of CC
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Have your cake and eat it too : the treatment of contemporaneous relationships under the Property (Relationships) Act 1976
Get PDFAlthough it is clear from the Act that a person can be in more than one qualifying relationship at a time, the courts have shown themselves to be reluctant to recognise contemporaneous relationships as falling within the ambit of the Act. Because of this, contemporaneous relationships will only be recognised where it is abundantly clear that the parties are living together as a couple.
Sections 52A and 52B are designed to divide property between relationships, and do not override the usual rules governing the division of relationship property between the partners in a relationship. Sections 52A and 52B will apply after the court finds that the relationship property of contemporaneous relationships overlap, and they will only apply to those pieces of property which are found to be relationship property of both relationships.
The first limb of the rule in sections 52A and 52B will be redundant as all property that is relationship property of a relationship is attributable to that relationship. Property which is relationship property of both relationships will be divided between the relationships in accordance with their respective contributions to its acquisition.
Sections 52A and 52B work to the advantage of the common partner, leaving them with half of the total relationship property. Because sections 52A and 52B only apply if the court has made findings in respect of each relationship, it is to the advantage of the common partner to litigate both disputes simultaneously, rather than undergo successive settlements with each partner. Sections 52A and 52B can also be used to manipulate the outcome where only one of the relationships has ended, or, in the case of the common partners' death, where one of the partners has an interest in retaining as much of the relationship property as possible between themselves and the deceased common partners estate.
Given the difficulties in applying sections 52A and 52B, and their fairly arbitrary outcome, they would be better replaced with an unambiguous provision which allocated specified shares to the relationships on a more objective basis.
[Extract from Introduction
New Zealand jurisprudence of shared, equal parental rights and responsibilities & the gendered hierarchy of care.
Get PDFxiv, 258 leaves :ill. (some col.), maps ; 30 cm. Bibliography: leaves 184-207. University of Otago department: Law.This thesis examines relationships between contemporary jurisprudence and gendered patterns of parenting behaviour. Distinguishing between parental rights and parental responsibilities, it identifies a hierarchy of care as the basis for successful parenting when parents separate, and explores the difficulties of imposing this upon parents for whom “shared” parenting has different meanings. It asks whether a child benefits more if the Court supports and protects the primary carer in the exercise of her parental responsibilities or enforces the rights of an auxiliary parent.
At present the New Zealand Family Court bases its decisions on the principles that the welfare of the child is paramount, parents share responsibility and gender is not an issue. When either parent or both will not accept their role in a hierarchy of care, these principles may allow the Court both to depend on and leave unacknowledged the existence of the hierarchy and to make two assumptions.
The first is that mothers who have been primary caregivers before separation will and should remain responsible for primary care regardless of the conditions under which they are required to do so. The Court can therefore include fathers in the parenting process on terms that may privilege and institutionalise their rights while institutionalising women’s parental responsibilities, thus reinforcing economic and social gender inequities. This may also result in disadvantages for children, including the effects of ongoing interparental conflict.
The Court may also assume that it is more important to support a father’s right to an ongoing, direct relationship with his child than to end conflict by protecting and supporting the child’s relationship with the primary carer. In prioritising a relationship with a second parent the law may overestimate its value, prolong conflict and understate the effects of this on children. The court may also misunderstand and misrepresent the motivations of mothers.
The thesis concludes that it is better to support and protect a child’s primary parental relationship than to enforce the rights of an auxiliary parent, arguing that rejecting the questioned assumptions is congruent with intentions expressed in the Preamble of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The methodology used is to explore the general context within which Family Court decisions are made, emphasising the assumptions made and values prioritised when parents cannot agree about the allocation of their responsibilities and the Court assesses how to best provide for the welfare of the child. The context includes research about gendered parenting patterns and the benefits of a relationship with a second parent (from New Zealand, United States and United Kingdom) local legislation, international instruments, and Family Court philosophy expressed outside the court. Some significant decisions about the allocation of parental responsibility are then analysed within this context. Finally suggestions are made for reform, with an exploration into how the proposed changes might affect the outcomes of the cases analysed
Parental control and the child's right not to be hit
Get PDFThis thesis is an examination of the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007 with respect to children's rights, specifically the right not to be hit. New Zealand's journey towards the abolishment of physical punishment was fraught with public concern and misunderstanding. Consequently, a full repeal of s59 of the Crimes Act 1961 was abandoned in favour of a substitution provision that would do away with physical punishment but allow parents to use some degree of force against their children. However, the failure to completely remove the legitimised use of force against children means that children still do not enjoy the same level of protection from assault as adults under the law. Furthermore, the Parental Control provision has created ambiguities in the law that never existed in the past.
Chapter one outlines competing rights arguments. This chapter is designed to give a theoretical and jurisprudential foundation for the conclusion that children have the same right not to be hit as adults.
Chapter two explores the history of New Zealand's domestic discipline legislation, and the consequences of ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This chapter also briefly highlights the reasons behind public resistance to the repeal of s59.
Chapter three is an assessment of the new Parental Control provision. The problems with the provision are highlighted, and its impact on children's rights is explored.
Chapter four contains a case analysis to compare the new Parental Control provision with its predecessor. In this chapter, real and hypothetic cases are put through three tests: The old s59, the new s59, and the complete repeal of s59
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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