Visit of Professor G Edward (Ted) White, University of Virginia, as the 2012 Legal Research Foundation Visiting Scholar 
17 March 2012 to 4 April 2012
The Auckland Law School is delighted to announce the visit of Professor G Edward (Ted) White as the 2012 Legal Research Foundation Distinguished Visiting Scholar.
Professor White is the David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law and University Professor at the University of Virginia.
He is the author of fifteen books, ranging from legal history and judicial biography through to constitutional and tort law. He is well known for his magisterial book The American Judicial Tradition (Oxford, 3rd. ed., 2007), as well as his biographies of Justices Earl Warren and Oliver Wendell Holmes (Earl Warren: A Public Life (Oxford, 1982) and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self (Oxford, 1993)).
His constitutional books include The Marshall Court and Cultural Change (Macmillan, 1988) and The Constitution and the New Deal (Harvard, 2000). Other books include Tort Law in America: An Intellectual History (2nd ed., 2003); Alger Hiss’s Looking-Glass Wars (2004) and a book on baseball – Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself (Princeton, 1996). His most recent book is just out – Law in American History: Volume One, From the Colonial Years Through the Civil War (Oxford, 2012).
White was law clerk to Chief Justice Warren of the Supreme Court of the United States for the 1971 Term, joining the law faculty at the University of Virginia in 1972.
While visiting the Auckland Law School Professor White will give a public lecture for the judiciary and profession, as well as a Faculty seminar and a lecture for students. His public lecture, on Tuesday 3 April (starting 6 pm in Stone Lecture Theatre, with drinks and nibbles at 5.15 in the Faculty Common Room, Level 4, 9 Eden Crescent) is entitled
No-Fault Accident Compensation in New Zealand and the United States – Divergent Species From a Common Ancestor.
This lecture will explore why no-fault accident compensation plans, which originated out of common concerns in the United States and New Zealand at approximately the same time, have evolved so differently in the two nations. In the United States some states embarked upon no fault motor vehicle accident regimes, but these have fared poorly in contrast to the more comprehensive New Zealand scheme with some being discontinued. In explaining why he will explore differing attitudes toward the role of government, different governmental structures, and the continuing importance of tort law as a mechanism for governing accident compensation in the United States.
His student Lecture is on
Bicameral and Unicameral Legislatures
, and considers why the legislature of the American federal government is bicameral, as is the legislature of all states save Nebraska. New Zealand, too, at one point in its history had a bicameral legislature, but the upper house (Legislative Council) was abolished in 1951 and has not been reinstated. His lecture explores the contrasts between unicameral and bicameral legislatures in nations with a common law heritage and a “rule of law” culture by focusing on the history of bicameralism in the United States. At the time of the adoption of the United States Constitution, some American state legislatures were unicameral, and the version of bicameralism adopted by the framers of the U.S. Constitution was unique among world nations.
His Faculty Seminar (Thursday 22 March, 1 pm) will be about the distinctive features of researching and writing biographies of judges. It makes some observations about biographical writing generally, and the particular challenges of judicial biography.
Professor White will be accompanied by his wife Susan, who is also a lawyer. She specializes in “collaborative law”, a unique approach to dispute resolution in (mainly) family law.
Enquiries may be made to the Legal Research Foundation Secretary, Barbara Relph at
09 309-9540 and barbara@legalresearch.org.nz or to Professor Paul Rishworth at
09 923-8031 and pt.rishworth@auckland.ac.nz
