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Most employment mediation in New Zealand is carried out by Resolution Services under the Employment Relations Act 2000. This article focuses on mediation styles. According to policy and statute, what styles are claimed to be used? According to mediators, what styles are actually used? What are the repercussions of these findings? Resolution Services’ eclectic approach to mediation styles is both consciously practiced and effective. However, this approach means that parties have little idea which style to expect and that mediators are mixing and matching styles which, according to the style creators, are not supposed to be mixed and matched.

Gillon v MacDonald (1878) was the climax of a feud that caused division in, and undermined the reputation of, the early New Zealand legal profession. Gillon features one of the most controversial episodes of contempt of court by a barrister in colonial legal history. The nature of the New Zealand legal profession, and in particular the relationship between bench and bar, is exposed through the case, its prologue and its aftermath. The complex saga occurred over several years and involved all three branches of government. Its causes are open to debate, but this article argues that personal and professional rivalry lies at the heart of the saga, and in particular, an obsessive vendetta on the part of George Elliot Barton. The events described in this article had far reaching consequences including possibly influencing New Zealand’s most infamous legal decision, Wi Parata v Bishop of Wellington (1877).

John Salmond dominated the New Zealand legal environment during the early twentieth century. Salmond performed many roles in the New Zealand legal system. This article focuses on his final legal role, as a Supreme Court judge, and looks at the nature of the Supreme Court Bench from 1920 to 1924. Some of New Zealand's greatest legal names sat with Salmond during this time. Twentieth century New Zealand legal history is a relatively unexplored area and requires more attention from historians. This article provides the basis for possible future work on the Supreme Court Bench during the early 1920s. In discussing the nature of "Salmond's Bench" the backgrounds of the different Supreme Court justices are explored. Following this, selected cases are analysed revealing distinctive factors relating to how this group of judges worked together and the nature of their judgments. Particular attention is paid to the divisions on the Bench regarding the crucial social issue of divorce. Viewing the decisions made by Salmond's Bench in the context of the political and social backgrounds of the judges and the historical background of this period provides a vital third dimension to the judgments. Salmond's distinctive approach to judicial decision-making becomes clearer when directly compared with the approaches of his judicial peers.

Chief Justice James Prendergast has largely been demonised over the last two decades as a result of his famous decision in the Wi Parata v The Bishop of Wellington case in 1877. In that decision, he notably stated that the apparent cession of sovereignty in the Treaty of Waitangi was "a simple nullity". This statement has effectively taken on a life of its own, and is still cited – with polarising effect – in the current debate on the place of the Treaty in modern New Zealand society. The author argues, however, that the debate and commentary on the case has largely omitted to consider Prendergast as a man of his times and background and as an important part of a small legal community. The part that others had to play in the Wi Parata case is often not mentioned, for example. This article seeks to redress the balance somewhat. In doing so, it does not underestimate the devastating effect which the decision had in supporting the alienation of Maori land. However it emphasises that Prendergast's view represented the orthodoxy of the time, and for some considerable time thereafter, and that his main fault was that he failed to rise above the prejudices of the settler society in which he lived.

Through the case method and Socratic dialogue, first year law students are taught to develop critical legal analytic skills-to “think like a lawyer.” Those skills, however, are primarily, if not entirely, intellectual. This article discusses the need to address emotional issues in educating law students. Unlike other articles, my article does not merely urge professors to raise such issues in their classes and discuss them analytically. Rather, I want students to actually experience emotion in the classroom setting as they discuss various fact situations and the legal principles involved in the resolution of disputes involving those facts. Law students need to understand and appreciate the emotions of people, including their own emotions, if they are to become the best lawyers they are capable of becoming. Educating law students about emotions should not be deferred until upper class clinical courses or professional responsibility courses. The place to begin that education is in the first year. To encourage such education, I present specific examples from my first-year Torts class in which I raise issues in a manner that results in an emotional response by students. I demonstrate how such methodology stimulates class discussion and enriches the law student’s educational experience.

In Kansas v. Hendricks, 521 U.S. 346 (1997), by the narrowest of margins, the Supreme Court upheld the Kansas Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) statute against several constitutional attacks. With this Supreme Court imprimatur, SVP legislation has become the wave of the present-a politically popular solution to the problem of repeated sexual violence against women and children. Typically, after an individual identifiable as an SVP serves a criminal sentence, he is subjected to civil commitment and detained indefinitely. Many scholars assert that Hendricks was wrongly decided and that SVP legislation should be held unconstitutional. I review their arguments and conclude that after Hendricks, they are not likely to succeed. However, the Supreme Court did not consider an equal protection attack on SVP legislation. In my article, I explain why an equal protection challenge claiming that SVPs are similarly situated with other civilly committed patients is likely to fail. Nevertheless, I believe that a properly framed equal protection claim could, and should succeed. I explain why, based on other Supreme Court decisions, SVP legislation impermissibly discriminates against sentence-expiring convicts, incompetent criminal defendants, and nondangerous insanity acquittees by exempting from SVP commitment other individuals who are equally mentally disordered and dangerous.

In this article, the author asserts that the right of involuntarily confined mental patients to refuse psychiatric treatment is both legally sound and medically desirable. This right is viewed as one example of the broader right of any patient to deny his consent to proposed medical treatment. The author critiques two devices that are utilized to subvert the right of mental patients to refuse psychiatric treatment: (1) a competency test that equates the patient's competence with his willingness to accept the psychiatrist's proposed therapy, and (2) the appointment of guardians to act as substitute decision-makers for civil and criminal patients who have not been declared incompetent to make treatment decisions.

Our criminal law is premised on this assumption: Because an individual has the ability to choose between socially acceptable and socially unacceptable behavior, he or she can be held responsible for conduct that violates the law. Thus, an individual who chooses to commit a crime is morally blameworthy and therefore an appropriate subject for punishment. The insanity defense developed as a device to exclude from criminal responsibility people whom society views as not blameworthy. A severely mentally disordered individual is not considered blameworthy because he or she lacks the capacity (free will) to form the intent to commit a criminal act.