Article: Controversial charities and public benefit

Jane Calderwood Norton (University of Auckland – Faculty of Law) recently published, Controversial charities and public benefit, 2018. Provided below is an abstract:

This article discusses the difficulty – both practically and constitutionally – of assessing public benefit in relation to controversial organisations (or, at least, organisations advocating for controversial causes). It argues that this difficulty has been exacerbated by the New Zealand Supreme Court’s rejection of the political purpose doctrine in its Greenpeace decision. Unlike previous commentators, it argues that the recent deregistration of Family First exposes the weaknesses in that judgment. Without recourse to the bright-line rule of the political purpose doctrine, decision-makers must assess the public benefit of controversial organisations engaged in law reform advocacy. This poses challenges for institutional competence and constitutional legitimacy.