About the Author

Dame Alison Quentin-Baxter is a distinguished public and international lawyer. She began her career as a member, and later the head, of the Legal Division of what was then the Department of External Affairs, and was a New Zealand representative at a number of conferences on the making or application of international law. Later she was a lecturer in law at Victoria University of Wellington where she taught constitutional history and law. From 1987–94 she was the director of the New Zealand Law Commission. Dame Alison has acted as a constitutional advisor in New Zealand and other jurisdictions including Niue, Fiji, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Saint Helena. She is the author of a report leading to the Sovereign’s issue of the 1983 Letters Patent Constituting the Office of Governor-General of New Zealand, Review of the Letters Patent 1917 Constituting the Office of Governor-General of New Zealand (Cabinet Office, 1980), editor of Recognising the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Institute of Policy Studies, 1998) and she has contributed a number of chapters and articles in books and journals. Dame Alison was appointed a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the law, and is a Companion of the Queen’s Service Order. Professor Janet McLean is a professor of law at the University of Auckland where she teaches constitutional and administrative law. She is the editor of Property and the Constitution (Hart, 1999) and author of Searching for the State in British Legal Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and has contributed numerous articles and chapters in leading books and journals.