... or, rather, the fellow prisoners who joined his application to have the legislative ban on prisoners voting declared inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act win again.
I'll write more on this later today, but seeing as I don't do social media and there may also be some of you out there in internet land who don't either ... this is a very important Court of Appeal case that changes New Zealand's constitution. If you are interested in law, public power and the role that the courts play vis-a-vis our Parliament, you need to read it.
[Update: promised longer post on the issue is now here.]
Comments (9)
That's not how the common law works! When a judge declares the law, it has always been the law. Accordingly, this has been the law since 28 September 1990, when the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act entered into force :-)
@Graeme,
It probably wont come as any suprise to you that there are many of us out here who do not partake in "Social Media", whatever that is, as we are too busy with Pundit , et all.
Why do we have so many dud judges and poorly written laws in NZ?
The whole point of incarceration is to deprive the convict of some of their 'human rights', namely:
17 Freedom of Association
18 Freedom of Movement
Having gotten over this logical hurdle (eyes roll skyward) surely the judge could have made the mental leap to figure out that it's not at all unreasonable to remove their electoral rights too.
But no - it seems a set of blinkers comes with the wig and gown.
So now parliament needs to go back and insert "unless you're a convicted criminal" in those clauses to stop evangelist judges from playing fast & loose with the intention of the law.
sigh!
The intention of the law is that sentenced prisoners should not vote. Sentenced prisoners cannot vote.
Thanks Graeme
It's not (just) the judges who said that depriving all prisoners of the right to vote is unreasonable. The Crown (i.e. the lawyers arguing the case for the Government) did not contest the claim that the law was unreasonable - it stood by the advice of the Attorney-General to Parliament to that effect when the law first was debated in the House.
So this case was really about what remedial steps the courts could take, not whether the law removing the rights of prisoners to vote actually is "unreasonable" (because both sides before the court conceded that point). And if you want to go back and review the arguments given for why that law should be passed, here you go.
....and that Andrew is what is known as 'an appeal to authority'.
@Charlie, do you think convicted criminals should ever be allowed to vote again and are there other civil transgressions that, in your opinion, should prohibit someone from voting ie. being gay, black, being a woman or having a physical or intellectual disability?
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