THE SEARCH FOR CERTAINTY: Essays in Honour of John Smillie

After an academic career spanning over forty years and engaging in many different areas of the law, Emeritus Professor John Smillie retired from the University of Otago in 2014. In honour of that achievement, this collection brings together a number of former colleagues, students and contemporaries to celebrate Professor Smillie’s significant contribution to legal scholarship.

This collection contains eleven essays written by leading academic commentators from both New Zealand and abroad on a range of subjects reflecting Professor Smillie’s expansive oeuvre. From administrative law to tort; legal theory to civil obligations, the common denominator in Professor Smillie’s work was a search for legal certainty and clarity, and this is demonstrated in the responses in this collection to some of his most influential works. Other essays build on the foundations that Professor Smillie created, critique his particular brand of jurisprudence or simply reflect on his 41 years of teaching at the University of Otago.

Academics, students and practitioners who are interested in the development and function of the common law will enjoy the essays in this collection, as will the many students and colleagues that were the benefactors of Professor Smillie’s dedication to the law.

Foreword

Editors’ Note

List of Contributors

1. “Who Wants Juristocracy?” Who Indeed?
   Jeremy Waldron
2. A Professor’s Progress: John Smillie on Bills of Rights
   James Allan
3. The Elegiac and Manichean Jurisprudence of John Smillie
   Michael Robertson
4. The Tort of Nuisance: “Trucking On”
   Bill Atkin
5. Compensation Schemes, Private Insurance and Public Policy: Reconciling Conflicting Principles
   Craig Brown
6. Contract Law, Contracting and Instrumentalism
   Simon Connell
7. Cyber-Currencies in Private Law
   David Fox
8. A Short History of “Law and Economics” in New Zealand in the 1990s
   Shelley Griffiths
9. The Smillie Method: A Tribute to Professor John Smillie’s Legal Scholarship
   Mark Henaghan
10. John Smillie, Judicial Review and New Zealand’s Missed Opportunity
    M B Rodriguez Ferrere
11. Multiple Judgments and the New Zealand Supreme Court
    Trevor J Shiels QC