Talk:Robin Cooke, Baron Cooke of Thorndon

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
	This article is supported by WikiProject Peerage and Baronetage (assessed as Low-importance).

Politics of the United Kingdom

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Politics of the United Kingdom on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Politics of the United KingdomWikipedia:WikiProject Politics of the United KingdomTemplate:WikiProject Politics of the United KingdomPolitics of the United Kingdom articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

New Zealand: Law Top‑importance

	New Zealand portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject New Zealand, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of New Zealand and New Zealand-related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.New ZealandWikipedia:WikiProject New ZealandTemplate:WikiProject New ZealandNew Zealand articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by the New Zealand law task force.

Law Mid‑importance

	Law portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.LawWikipedia:WikiProject LawTemplate:WikiProject Lawlaw articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Tip: Anchors are case-sensitive in most browsers.

This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.

[[Treaty of Waitangi#.22Principles of the Treaty.22|principles elicited by President Cooke]] The anchor (#.22Principles of the Treaty.22) is no longer available because it was deleted by a user before.

Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. | Reporting errors

Liberal vs natural law

I don't think the term "liberal" is a useful description of the judicial style of Lord Cooke. It means different things to different people, and either implies a bias towards certain issues re gender and race etc, or suggests a laissez-faire approach to applying the law, neither of which are very well founded. Natural law is the closest I could think of, but what I really mean to indicate is that where legislation was silent on a particular issue, he was more enthusiastic than some about filling the gaps to resolve a case. Perhaps there's a jurisprudential term that does this better, but that doesn't carry the pejorative sense and constitutional context of "judicial activism". --Tirana 01:04, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've always thought the "judicial activist" was unfair on President Cooke with respect to the Lands case, it was Parliament that invented the term "Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi" and passed an unclear statute. To complain that Cooke was an activist because he simply stated principles Parliament didn't bother to enumerate in law seems unfair. Natural law - in terms of natural justice - seems to be a much better term for it. --Lholden 01:49, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. There's a spectrum of natural law. There's a big difference between filling in the gaps and stretching the gaps as wide as you can to encompass new ideas. Justice Thomas (otherwise known as Justice Thomas Dissenting) was closer to the latter in Quilter and Ruka than Cooke ever got. The scope for judicial activism in a country with no supreme constitution is limited, anyway. --Tirana 02:58, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hah, looks like someone's been using this page for their research: Dominion Post obituary 1 September 06. I don't suppose it's plagiarism under the GDFL, but it doesn't comply with WP:Cite :-) --Tirana 21:53, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

His farewell from the Privy Council

People wishing to add to the page may be interested in my transcript (from [2002] 2 NZLR 586) of part of the farewell speech by Lord Bingham of Cornhill: about halfway down on http://www.webspawner.com/users/robinp5/ --Robin Patterson 06:03, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]