Mark Hickford
Mark was the Pro Vice-Chancellor of Government, Law and Business at Victoria University of Wellington until 4 July 2023, having assumed that role from 26 October 2021. Prior to that he was the Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Law from 11 May 2015. In his role as Pro Vice-Chancellor of Government, Law and Business he was responsible for the Faculty of Law and the Wellington School of Business and Government. He has had an extensive legal practice in both the public and private sectors since 1993, with specialist expertise in Māori-Crown Relations law and practice (including Treaty settlements), constitutional and public law, the Treaty of Waitangi, and indigenous rights. Mark has appeared as counsel in the ordinary courts as well as in specialist jurisdictions, such as the Waitangi Tribunal, Māori Land Court, and Environment Court. Recent legal expertise work has included assisting and advising legal counsel in First Nations’ aboriginal title litigation in the Canadian courts with legal-historical, strategic reviews of filed expert evidence.
A considerable part of his practice has engaged solutions-focused advisory work for clients, whether in Treaty of Waitangi settlements or assisting policy development and legislative design. Before becoming Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Law in 2015, Mark was the legal advisor to the Prime Minister in the Prime Minister’s Policy Advisory Group in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet from 2010 until 2015. As Crown Counsel in the Treaty of Waitangi and natural resources areas, he advised many public sector agencies across the justice, natural resource and economic sectors, as well as Ministers of the Crown directly. Mark was the Chief Legal Adviser and Director of the Legal Services Directorate at the Ministry for Primary Industries from August 2013 until April 2014 (seconded from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet). Mark was at Chapman Tripp (Auckland office) from 1993 until 1996 and was also based at a public law specialist firm, Chen Palmer & Partners, from 2000 until 2002.
Mark obtained his doctorate from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom in 1999.
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Sample of general public law advisory and solutions-focussed work at the heart of government.
Substantial work in:
Negotiations, policy and legislative design in Treaty of Waitangi settlements (through all phases – terms of negotiation, agreements in principle, deeds of settlement and settlement legislation): illustrations include acting as counsel for the Crown in Te Arawa Lakes negotiations; Whanganui River (Te Awa Tupua) negotiations, and Te Urewera negotiations.
Significant legal-policy advisory work on a range of natural resource and indigenous-Crown relations issues, including the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011 (and its forerunner), freshwater policy and regulation (working with iwi advisors’ group), fisheries, marine reserves and other protected areas in the marine environment, national parks, general conservation policy, minerals and petroleum, the Protected Objects Act 1975 (and reform of the preceding legislation, particularly concerning provision for taonga tūturu), conservation regime issues including the Wildlife Act 1953.
Negotiations concerning the foreshore and seabed interests of Ngāti Porou and Te Whānau a Apanui (2004-2008).
Establishing inquiries, including two royal commissions, the first inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2013 (the Government Inquiry into the Whey Protein Concentrate (WPC) Contamination Incident), and various other Ministerial inquiries.
Sample of Cases – ordinary courts and specialist jurisdictions
Henare & Ors v Horowhenua District Council – Hokio A Trust (2013) 310 Aotea MB 366 (accretion and Māori land; interface between Te Ture Whenua Māori Act 1993 and approaches to accretion). Counsel for the Crown.
Genesis Power Limited v Manawatu-Wanganui Regional Council & Ors (2006) NZRMA 536. Counsel for the Attorney-General.
Ngati Apa v Attorney-General [2003] 3 NZLR 634 (CA) and Attorney-General & Ors v Ngati Apa & Ors [2002] 2 NZLR 661 (HC). Māori customary land status under Te Ture Whenua Māori Act 1993 and indigenous rights at common law. Counsel with Sir Geoffrey Palmer.
Appeal to Privy Council – Preparing, drafting and designing all Privy Council papers and submissions of counsel (including skeleton argument) for the Privy Council hearing of McGuire and Makea v Hastings District Council [2002] 2 NZLR 577 (JCPC) for the successful party. Sir Geoffrey Palmer (senior counsel) and instructing solicitor attended in London.
New Zealand Racing Industry Board v Attorney General [2003] NZAR 85 (HC). Counsel with Sir Geoffrey Palmer.
Bleakley v Environmental Risk Management Authority [2001] 3 NZLR 213 (HC). Co-counsel with Jamie Ferguson of Kahui Legal.
Aviation Industry Association of New Zealand (Incorporated) & Ors v Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand, High Court, Wellington. 24 August 2001; CP289/00. Hansen J. Judicial review trial on relationship between the Civil Aviation Act 1990, the Civil Aviation Rules, Part 67, and the Medical Manual of the Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand. Counsel with Sir Geoffrey Palmer.
Acting as counsel for the New Zealand Overseas Investment Commission in cases before the High Court on judicial review and declaratory judgment proceedings.
Recent offshore work
Assisting legal counsel in First Nations’ aboriginal title litigation in the Canadian courts with legal-historical reviews of expert evidence
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Mark was the New Zealand Law Foundation International Research Fellow in 2008.
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Member of the Board of the Institute of Judicial Studies - Te Kura Kaiwhakawā from February 2019 until September 2023 (The Institute was established in July 1998. It is the professional development arm of the New Zealand judiciary).
Member of the New Zealand Council of Legal Education from May 2015 until 26 October 2021 (an independent statutory oversight body under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006).
Acting Chair of the New Zealand Council of Legal Education from May 2019 until November 2019 at request of retiring Chair, Hon Justice Simon France.
Executive Committee member of the New Zealand Council of Legal Education from April 2018 (and from November 2019 with the new Chair, Hon Justice Cooper of the Court of Appeal, Justice Van Bohemen and the Chief Executive, Rosemary Gordon).
Board member of Grants Committee of the Borrin Foundation from its inception until November 2022 (inaugural Board member along with the Chief Justice (or their nominee), the President of the New Zealand Law Society and the inaugural chair, David Goddard QC (now the Hon Justice Goddard)).
Member of the Legislation Advisory Committee (LAC) from 2010 until 2015.
Professor of Law (May 2015-July 2023).
Judge of the Rex Mason Trust Award for Excellence in Legal Writing from 2015 until 2022 (with the Chief Justice’s delegate and a representative of the New Zealand Law Journal).
Member of the Public Law Committee of the Wellington District Law Society, 2003-2004, and 2004-2005 terms.
Director on the Board of the Australia New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) from 25 May 2022 until 4 July 2023.
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Books and edited volumes
Lords of the Land: Indigenous Property Rights and the Jurisprudence of Empire (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011).
With Carwyn Jones (co-editor), Indigenous Peoples and the State: International Perspectives on the Treaty of Waitangi (Routledge, Abingdon, 2018).
Mark Hickford, ‘A conceptual approach to privacy’, NZLC MP19, report for the New Zealand Law Commission, (1 November 2007).
Simon Terry, Mark Hickford, Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Professor Geoff Bertram, Who Bears the Risk? Genetic Modification and Liability (Wellington, September 2001).
Book chapters
‘Treaty Settlements Rōpū (Office of Treaty Settlements) – Crown Policy and Practice on Post-Treaty Settlement Governance’, in Richard Benton and Robert Joseph eds., Waking the Taniwha: Māori Governance in the 21st Century (ThomsonReuters, Wellington, 2021), 223-261.
‘Historical Approaches to Administrative Justice’, in Joe Tomlinson, Robert Thomas, Marc Hertogh, and Richard Kirkham eds., Oxford Handbook of Administrative Justice (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2022; initially published online by Oxford University Press, Oxford, June 2021).
‘Quasi-Constitutionality and the Treaty of Waitangi: Politics and Historicity’, in Richard Albert and Joel Colón-Ríos eds., Quasi-Constitutionality and Constitutional Statutes: Forms, Functions, Applications (Routledge, Abingdon, 2019), 94-116.
‘Colonial and Indigenous “Laws”: The Case of Britain’s Empires, circa 1750–1850’, in Heikki Pihlajamäki, Markus Dubber, and Mark Godfrey eds., The Oxford Handbook on European Legal History (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018), 876-903.
‘Reflecting on the Treaty of Waitangi and its Constitutional Dimensions: A Case for a Research Agenda’, in Mark Hickford and Carwyn Jones eds., Indigenous Peoples and the State: International Perspectives on the Treaty of Waitangi (Routledge, Abingdon, 2018), 140-165.
‘Reflecting on Landscapes of Obligation, their Making and Tacit Constitutionalisation: freshwater claims, proprietorship and “stewardship”’, in Linda Te Aho, Maria Humphries and Betsan Martin eds., ResponsAbility: Law and Governance for Living Well with the Earth (Routledge, Abingdon, 2018), 162-182.
‘A Commentary on the Problematics of “Cultural” Property: Modus Vivendi in New Zealand’ Hors Serie XXI: Do Cultural and Property Combine to Make "Cultural Property” (2017), 101-21.
‘Interpreting the Treaty: Questions of Native Title, Territorial Government and Searching for Constitutional Histories’, in B. Patterson, Richard Hill, and Kathryn Patterson eds., After the Treaty: The Settler State, Race Relations and Power in Colonial New Zealand (Steele Roberts, Wellington, 2016), 92-131.
‘Framing and Reframing the Agōn: Contesting Narratives and Counter-Narratives on Māori Property Rights and Political Constitutionalism, 1840-1861’, in Saliha Belmessous ed., Native Claims: Indigenous Law against Empire, 1500-1920 (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2012).
‘Law and Politics in the Constitutional Delineation of Indigenous Property Rights in 1840s New Zealand’ in Shaunnagh Dorsett and Ian Hunter eds., Law and Politics in British Colonial Thought: Transpositions of Empire (Palgrave, New York, 2010), 249-268.
‘Strands from the Afterlife of Confiscation: Property rights, constitutional histories and the political incorporation of Māori, 1910s-1940s’, in P.G. McHugh, Richard Boast and Mark Hickford, Law and Confiscation: Essays on Raupatu in New Zealand History, Treaty of Waitangi Research Unit, Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies Occasional Papers (OP14), Wellington, 2010.
‘The law of the foreshore and seabed’, New Zealanders and the Sea (Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand) (David Bateman, Auckland, 2009).
‘The law of the foreshore and seabed’, Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Ministry for Culture and Heritage: http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/EarthSeaAndSky/OceanStudyAndConservation/LawOfTh-eForeshoreAndSeabed/en (2006).
‘Strands from the Afterlife of Confiscation: Property rights, constitutional histories and the political incorporation of Māori, 1920s’ in Richard Hill and Richard Boast eds., Raupatu: The Confiscation of Māori Land (Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2009).
Peer reviewed articles in journals
‘Historicity and the Political Constitution’ (2019) King’s Law Journal, 30 (2019), 97-124.
‘Designing constitutions in Britain’s Mid-Nineteenth Century Empire – Indigenous Territorial Government in New Zealand and Retrieving Constitutional Histories’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 46 (2018), 676-706.
‘A Commentary on the Problematics of “Cultural” Property: Modus Vivendi in New Zealand’ Hors Serie XXI: Do Cultural and Property Combine to Make “Cultural Property” (2017), 101- 21.
‘Designing constitutions in Britain’s Mid-Nineteenth Century Empire – Indigenous Territorial Government in New Zealand and Retrieving Constitutional Histories’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, (online – 7 December 2017) 1-31 (https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2017.1408228); print (2018) Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, volume 46, issue 4.
‘Situating Stewardship in the State Sector: Considering “Legislative Stewardship” in Context’, New Zealand Journal of Public and International Law, 15 (2017), 39-65.
‘Considering the Historical-Political Constitution and the Imperial Inheritance in Mid-Nineteenth Century New Zealand: Balance, Diversity and Alternative Constitutions’, New Zealand Journal of Public and International Law, 12 (2014) 145-185. 13
‘Looking Back in Anxiety: Reflecting on Colonial New Zealand’s Historical-Political Constitution and Laws’ Histories in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, 48 (2014) New Zealand Journal of History 1-29.
‘The Historical, Political Constitution – Some Reflections on Political Constitutionalism in New Zealand’s History and its Possible Normative Qualities’, New Zealand Law Review, 4, (2013) pp.585–623.
‘“Vague Native Rights to Land”: British Imperial Policy on Native Title and Custom in New Zealand, 1837-1853’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 38 (2010), 175-206.
‘John Salmond and Native Title in New Zealand: Developing a Crown theory on the Treaty of Waitangi, 1910-1920’, Victoria University of Wellington Law Review, 38, 4 (2008), 853-924.
‘“Decidedly the most interesting savages on the globe”: an approach to the intellectual history of Māori property rights, 1837-1853’, (2006) History of Political Thought, 27, (1), 121-167.
‘“Settling some very important principles of Colonial law”: Three “forgotten” cases of the 1840s’, Victoria University of Wellington Law Review, 35, 1 (2004), 1-71.
‘Native title in Australia’, Asia Pacific Daily Brief, Oxford Analytica, 19 May 1997.
Seminars delivered internationally and domestically
I have presented at a considerable number of seminars, domestically and internationally, most recently at the Administrative Justice workshop at King’s College London, August 2019 (for the forthcoming publication of the Oxford Handbook on Administrative Justice (to be published by Oxford University Press)).
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D Phil (Doctorate) University of Oxford
B.A. LL.B(Hons) University of Auckland
Mark has a doctorate from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and undergraduate degrees from the University of Auckland in history and political studies as well as law.
Successfully completed an Executive Leadership Development, ‘Achieving leadership excellence’ course at the London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom
