Richard Boast

Richard is a specialist in legal history, Māori land law, Pacific legal studies, comparative law, and property law. He teaches in these subjects and has has also taught or co-taught postgraduate courses on New Zealand legal history, law and anthropology, and the origins of indigenous people's law in the Spanish colonial empire. He has considerable experience in private practice as a barrister and has appeared before the Māori Land Court and the Waitangi Tribunal on many occasions both as counsel and as an expert historical witness. He has published many books and articles on legal history, Māori land law, property law, and natural resources law. In 2009 his book Buying the Land, Selling the Land, which dealt with Māori land, the Native Land Court and the government from 1865-1920 was awarded the Montana Book award for history. He is currently involved in a large-scale project of publishing a critical edition of leading judgments of the Native/Māori Land Court, Vol 1 of which was published in 2013 (1862-1886) and Vol 2 in 2015 (1887-1909). Vol 1 was the co-winner of an award for the best law book published in its year. Vol 3, taking the history of the Court to 1953 was published in 2019 and was won an award for the best book on New Zealand law published in its year.

Other works written, or co-written, by Richard include Foreshore and Seabed (2004) and New Zealand's two principal textbooks on legal history and Māori land law. In 2009 he co-edited and contributed to a book of essays on confiscation of Māori land in New Zealand. In 2015 Richard was appointed as a Queen's Counsel in recognition of his contributions to New Zealand legal-historical scholarship. Richard was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) in recognition of his contributions to scholarship and his work for iwi.

Richard has written over 30 research reports for the Waitangi Tribunal process and has been involved as an expert historian in a number of settlement negotiations involving iwi and the Crown. He has represented many iwi groups in the Waitangi Tribunal, and has given many special submissions to the Tribunal on particular issues, including the law relating to the foreshore and seabed, Crown purchasing of Māori land, and the Native Land Court. In 2015, as part of the celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the Māori Land Court, Richard was invited to present a submission on the history of the Court to a special commemorative sitting of the Court at Whanganui. In 2009 he was a member of a panel established by the Attorney-General to review the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004.

Current Research:

In 2012 Richard was awarded a grant by the Marsden fund administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand to study comparative tenurial changes in and around the Pacific. A number of chapters and articles have now been published based on the research carried out for this project. Richard has a particular interest on the parallels and differences between the legal history of New Zealand and other countries, including Hawai'i, Australia and various Latin American countries, and has given a number of seminar and conference papers on this topic in New Zealand and overseas (including Australia, Uruguay, Tahiti, Germany, and Indonesia). Richard is continuing to research and publish in the fields of legal history, indigenous issues, and Latin American law, and he continues to carry out research for iwi in support of claims to the Waitangi Tribunal and also iwi claims relating to the marine and coastal area (MACA). Richard has recently completed three major research reports for Māori iwi. Two of these were prepared to support Ngati Raukawa's historical claims in the Waitangi Tribunal's Porirua ki Manawatu regional inquiry. Richard gave expert testimony based on these reports to the Waitangi Tribunal on a number of occasions in 2022-2023. Recently he has completed a three-volume research report for Ngati Toarangatira of Porirua on the pre-1840 traditional history of Ngāti Toa, which was lodged with the High Court of New Zealand on 13 Feb 2024. Richard has recently published a number of articles on the legal history of Polynesia and the Pacific and is currently working on a project on the legal history of Southeast Asia and the Pacific.