Setting the Agenda

Well, it is 250 years since the pākeha ancestors, with inferior navigation skills, met nga tupuna Māori at Gisborne. Lt. Cook, as he was then, had embarked on the Endeavour ostensibly to view the transit of Venus across the sun from a vantage point in the South Pacific. Once this task was completed, he opened sealed orders from the Admiralty that asked him to go searching for the elusive Terra Australis, the large land mass that was believed to exist in the Southern Ocean.

This week’s Supreme Court decision in the UK reached back much further than the second world war into British common law to find that Boris Johnson illegally prorogued parliament.  From a legal perspective, it was an elegant and comprehensive decision that invoked the shadows of much older law.