Sovereignty as Governance in the Early New Zealand Crown Colony Period

Abstract

This is chapter 11 in a book jointly edited by the Author on Law and Politics in British Colonial Thought.The chapter traces several ways in which sovereignty was understood in certain British intellectual contexts during the key period of the first half of the nineteenth century, and the various constructs of sovereignty which were employed in response to specific circumstances of colonial governance. The topic around which this consideration of sovereignty is organized is that of the problem of the ordering of Empire and of the management of colonial relations, both between metropole and colony, and with respect to the internal legal order of one colony, New Zealand. These matters are explored through the writings of two men, Henry Samuel Chapman (1803-1881) and George Cornewall Lewis (1806-1863). Chapman was appointed second judge of the Supreme Court of New Zealand in 1843.

Keywords: New Zealand, Austin, Chapman, British, colony, sovereignty, jurisdiction, Maori, indigenous, governance, Cornewall Lewis