How do constitutional conventions play into the Government’s announcement that the 2020 election is delayed due to the resurgence of COVID-19 in New Zealand? Geoff, Dean, Nessa and Eddie gather in an urgent fashion to discuss the drums beats of a constitutional crisis…or lack thereof.

During a national emergency arising out of a global pandemic that many countries are still struggling to contain, the government provided advice on voluntary compliance measures to isolate the threat by restricting contact between everyone but those we lived with, on a nationwide scale. The voluntary compliance approach was predicated on government press conference messaging to co-opt the goodwill of a “team of five million”, with the lens of the law focused on a network of regulatory tools. How should the legally-minded think about the flexible but necessarily murky approach taken by the executive in light of its failure to fit with traditional rule of law standards; standards of certainty, and clarity?

From whose perspective should the risk of an unforeseen medical consequence be considered for the purposes of ACC compensation? Should unforeseen consequences be approached holistically by the courts, or broken up into a series of events? How do courts distinguish between injury and illness? Geoff and Dr Eddie Clark discuss the critical cases that provide an insight into these divisions in our healthcare system.