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• The current trial of Lauren Dickason is a case in point, and the jury has a complex task in front of it.
• The latter may seem like a statement of the obvious, given Dickason does not deny the killings.
• What legislation and other sources of law mean is often contestable, and there may be specialised definitions.

Murder and manslaughter

• But the language used reflects a structure that goes back to English law from centuries ago, and is split into two offences: murder and manslaughter.
• Basically, murder is killing someone with “malice aforethought”, and manslaughter is any other culpable killing.
• But variations were introduced largely to avoid the formerly mandatory death penalty for murder, by allowing the offence to be stepped down to manslaughter.
• That condition was removed after Clayton Weatherston tried to use it in his trial for the 2008 murder of Sophie Elliott.

Infanticide and insanity

• New Zealand has never had such “diminished responsibility” – except in relation to infanticide.
• Infanticide has a legalistic meaning in the courtroom: it does not mean the killing of an infant.
• But the legislation also notes that if the defendant’s disorder was so great that there was insanity, then there must be a “special verdict of acquittal on account of insanity caused by childbirth”.

Modern psychiatry and Victorian language

• The law relating to insanity still uses language from Victorian times.
• It applies to all offences, though it is most prominently used in homicide cases.
• The doctors giving expert evidence have to try to mould modern understandings of psychiatry into this outdated legal framework, which has limited nuance to it.

The jury’s challenge

• Having considered whether the deaths would otherwise have been murder or manslaughter, they will then have to consider whether the expert evidence shows there was some disturbance in her mental health.
• If so, and if it was caused by childbirth or lactation, was it far enough down the line to amount to infanticide?

• The recent failure of the proposed Kermadec ocean sanctuary is a striking reminder of the need for leadership around New Zealand’s ocean policies.
• The “no take” ocean sanctuary was meant to be one of the world’s largest marine protected areas.
• But last month Te Ohu Kaimoana (which represents Māori fisheries interests) voted against the latest proposal.

New Zealand’s vast ocean territory

• Aotearoa is surrounded by a sea territory 15 times the size of its landmass.
• This extends from the shorelines of the main islands to the Kermadecs (Rangitāhua) in the northwest, the Chathams (Rēkohu) in the east and the subantarctic Campbell Island in the south Pacific ocean.
• Two in three New Zealanders live within 5km of the shore and many use the ocean and coasts for recreational and cultural activities.

An ecosystem approach to marine policy

• This involves managing the marine environment in a way that reconciles competing values without degrading the ocean ecosystem.
• A more holistic and relational ecosystem-based approach to managing human activities in the ocean would acknowledge the inter-dependencies between living and non-living marine ecosystem components, including people.
• Read more:
  Our oceans are in deep trouble – a 'mountains to sea' approach could make a real difference

Fundamental principles driving oceans policy

• Our research found we already have legal and policy “hooks” (or promising reform initiatives underway) that can support ecosystem-based management across the four key marine policy areas of fisheries, conservation, coastal planning and Māori rights and interests.
• Each of these policy areas operates on different time and geographic scales and is working towards (sometimes vastly) different policy objectives, with varying budgets and resources.
• To overcome this, our research confirmed we need to agree on fundamental marine principles to “anchor” ecosystem-based management and ensure our policy objectives are complementary and consistent with Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

A ministry for the ocean

• Marine policy is still spread across multiple laws and institutions working for different purposes.
• Recent environmental reforms have focused on land-based issues of resource management, conservation and climate adaptation, taking a sector-by-sector approach and overlooking the interconnected threats facing our ocean.
• We go further and argue Aotearoa needs a ministry for the ocean to match the ministerial portfolio, reflecting the complexity of marine management and departing from the terrestrial bias of our existing laws and institutions.
• A dedicated ministry could ensure oversight, coordination and alignment of marine policy.

• Estimated to number between 700,000 and 1,000,000 globally, Rastafarian communities are located on almost every continent today.
• Their beliefs are spread through migration, reggae music, as well as print, visual and digital media.
• Similarly, Rastafarians are of the view that Emperor Selassie is God, or Jah, who manifested in human form, and that they are God’s chosen people.

God as monarch

• Rastafarians believe that the king traces his lineage to the Old Testament’s King David of the Tribe of Judah, and to David’s son, King Solomon.
• Rastafarians view the king’s coronation in 1930, his titles and his lineage as fulfilling a prophecy in the Book of Revelation.
• The Rastafari, named for their god – King Ras Tafari – grew from a tiny community to number in the tens of thousands in Jamaica by the 1990s, as I explain in my 2022 book “Rastafari: The Evolution of a People and Their Identity.”

The travails of worshiping a Black god

• From the 1930s into the 1970s the Rastafari were scorned by their fellow Jamaicans, subjected to discrimination and violence.
• Some critics asserted that the Rastafari finally had been proved foolish and that their God was dead.
• Bob Marley rebuffed the critics in his acclaimed song, “Jah Live” (meaning God lives).

What happens if God dies?

• Some denied Emperor Selassie was dead, insisting that God cannot die, and no body was found to confirm the death.
• Others said only time would reveal the meaning of the emperor’s disappearance, since God’s ways are beyond the ken of mortals.
• Some others believed that the emperor was worthy of veneration but not as God.

• For the first time since 1960, actors and screenwriters are on strike at the same time.
• Screenwriters, who have been on strike since May 2, have similar concerns.
• Premieres are being canceled, and Emmy-nominated actors aren’t campaigning for those prestigious TV awards.

Rewind to the rise of TV

• The first hit shows on TV aired in the mid-1940s, but actors initially earned far less from television than movies.
• Around 1960, with the advent of hits like “Leave It to Beaver,” “Beverly Hillbillies” and “Bonanza,” TV became very profitable.
• Actors demanded that their craft be compensated for TV shows about as highly as for their film appearances.
• Residuals are a form of royalty paid to actors when movies and TV shows air on television after their initial run.

Fast-forward to 2023

• People consume different types of media through subscriptions and streaming technology than they do while watching broadcast TV and cable television.
• Actors and writers are concerned that their compensation hasn’t kept up with this transformation.
• And the actors who are on strike argue that the formulas in place since 1960 to calculate residuals don’t work anymore.

Ejecting regularly scheduled shows

• That’s because streamers started making shows with lower budgets, as it costs less to produce fewer episodes.
• Since actors are typically paid per episode in which they perform, their salaries have dropped by virtue of having fewer appearances in even the most popular shows.
• Another change has to do with the question of whether particular shows will keep going.
• And their contracts often stop them from working on other shows between seasons.

Will AI erase actors?

• Without a contract that says otherwise, once a studio films an actor, it can potentially use the actor’s likeness in perpetuity.
• It is dystopian.” Until now, actors and writers say, the studios have refused to negotiate over AI with actors or writers.
• But both unions see AI as a threat to their members’ livelihoods, a point SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher made on MSNBC.

No ‘pause’ for widening inequality gap

• The gulf between what actors and top executives earn is a major difference between today’s actors and writer strikes and the 1960 strikes.
• In 1965, executives made 15 times the average salary of their workers.
• By 2021 those top execs were earning 350 times more than the average worker – including actors.

Watching union action on repeat

• From Starbucks baristas to Amazon’s union organizers to the workers planning the pending UPS strike, more and more Americans are fighting for higher wages and more control over their schedules.
• In fighting threats to their livelihoods, actors and screenwriters are the latest example of a national movement for stronger labor rights.