Judicial activism, NZ style

Recently, my august colleague harbored a discussion linking judicial activism to bills of rights. Now, it seems to me that with or without a bill of rights the community will always, well, expect a certain level of judicial activism anyways.... or at least they should do. The separation of powers is, for rather obvious reasons, a damn good thing. Further, even competent and just governments cannot be expected to foresee every circumstance to which a given law may be applied - and so cannot possibly be expected to draft law, the interpretation of which will fail to be ambiguous in every possible circumstance to which it will be applied. Thus, at some point or other it will become inevitable that judges will find themselves staring down the barrel of multiple interpretations of the law to a given circumstance - one of which they must pick guided only by (we would hope) their reason and their conscience. Lastly, requiring that law-makers face a hostile judicial environment is, I rather think, a good thing for the democratic process in the long term anyway.

I would like, then, to take a quiet judicial-activism appreciation moment. I would like us to reflect that, on occasion, it can fall on the shoulders of judges to act as those that stand on the wall as our last lines of defense against a descent into barbarism. Perhaps we can all recall at this moment our favorite instance of such a moment. Much of my pinko-commo readership will, I imagine, be thinking of, say, the Mabo decision at this point. I am not. For me, there will always be the one definitive moment of an instance where, with the barbarians at gates of the courthouse a single judge stood firm and said .... "no. Here is a line that society simply must not cross. I cannot, in good conscience, allow such a pernicious blot on the name of humanity to stand." Further, I am pleased to say that this case occurred right here in my adopted home of New Zealand. Wiping away the tears, dear reader, I refer you to the details¹.

¹Make damn sure you read the readers comments. Oh, yeah, and thanks Helena.