Tikanga with common law can help New Zealand face its deepening racial challenges

University of Otago Professor of Law Jacinta Ruru. Photo / Supplied

A Māori legal academic says Māori law can help Aotearoa New Zealand respond to its challenges.

University of Otago deputy vice-chancellor Jacinta Ruru — the first Māori professor of law — was last month awarded an honorary doctorate in law by Newcastle University in the United Kingdom in recognition of her work on decolonising legal education.

She says reimagining the legal system to embrace Māori law and tikanga alongside state law and the English common law could form the basis for a stronger society.

“If we can draw confidently from the huge sophistication and complexity of Māori law, it can really help us with today’s challenges. We have a lot of challenges around climate change and sea level rise and poverty and housing and criminal justice systems, and we can draw on the Māori legal system to help us navigate forward confidently as a country,” Ruru told Radio Waatea News.

She said it was not only training Māori lawyers to present in the court, but to train judges and the legal system to listen to arguments based on Māori law.

Derived from the Māori word tika, meaning right or correct, tikanga Māori is a customary set of rules and practices that regulated the tribal societies in New Zealand pre-1840. Tikanga includes spiritual beliefs and inherited values and concepts practised from generation to generation.

– Ngawai Kaire, WaateaNews.Com