Litigation is probably the best known tool, but it is top-shelf and last resort. There are many other ways, often cheaper and more constructive, to influence policy and legislation upstream before you end up having no choice but to sue over decisions made under laws that don't work or disadvantage you.
This year has provided many examples of public law tools in action.
* The referendum on MMP could have been a tool to major constitutional change to another electoral system, but there was no majority support.
Instead, the Electoral Commission is reviewing MMP to recommend changes by October. MMP has again produced a minority government dependent on the support of other parties, which will fundamentally affect the way government operates.
* The confidence and supply agreements signed by the Maori Party, ACT and United Future have policy and legislative commitments which have to be kept by the government.
* The Government has established royal commissions of inquiry into the Pike River mine tragedy and the Canterbury earthquake. Although still in progress, these inquiries have begun to reveal what really went on. Law and policy changes are likely.
* Reforming the law that governs us is a tool and can be used under urgency, like the Rugby World Cup legislation and the Video Cameras (Temporary Measures) Bill. There is likely to be less urgency now that Parliament has agreed to change Standing Orders to allow the House to sit for longer, providing more time to consider legislation without taking urgency.
* The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment made headlines this year with her report into the use of 1080 poison in pest control.
* The Privacy Commissioner issued warnings about Sony's PlayStation network, inquired into Google applications, and commented on the use of "privacy" to excuse not reporting child abuse.
* The Law Commission completed its review of the Privacy Act 1993, recommending that the Privacy Commissioner be given greater powers, including a new power to issue compliance notices, and to require an audit of an agency's information-handling practices to make binding decisions on complaints about a person's right to access their own personal information and to bring proceedings before the Human Rights Review Tribunal.
* Court decisions are another tool, but subject to Parliament's supremacy in law-making. Thus the Government tried to pass retrospective legislation validating unlawful police surveillance after the Supreme Court's decision in the Urewera case that the right to be protected from unreasonable search and surveillance under the NZ Bill of Rights Act had been breached.
* The Waitangi Tribunal is a tool for determining Treaty breaches by the Crown, and Wai 262 Report came out this year after 21 years of gestation. The Government repealed the foreshore and seabed legislation and replaced it with the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill.
* Select committee inquiries are a tool. The Maori Affairs select committee inquiry into the tobacco industry recommended further restrictions on advertising and display of tobacco. Those recommendations were enacted as part of the Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Act 2011.
* Mai Chen is a partner in the firm Chen Palmer and an adjunct professor at the University of Auckland business school.
