Ian Borrin Lecture

The Borrin Lecture is delivered in honour of Judge Ian Borrin, an alumnus and major supporter of the Victoria University of Wellington Law Review.

Judge Borrin was born in Wellington on 13 February 1935. He attended Wellington College and Victoria University of Wellington where he gained an LLB in 1958. He practised law until 1983 when he was appointed to the District Court. He served as head of the Police Complaints Authority from 2001 until he retired in 2007.

In 2010, with the Faculty of Law, he established a Visiting Fellowship in Law at the University. It aims to enable scholars, academics and members of the judiciary to visit the Law School, engage with the public through presentations and seminars, and enhance research by interacting with staff and postgraduate students.

Before his death in 2016 he established the Michael and Suzanne Borrin Foundation to support legal research, scholarship, writing and education in New Zealand.

A room at the Law School, the Ian Borrin Reading Room, is named in his honour.

Ian Borrin Lecture 2025

The 2025 Ian Borrin Lecture was delivered by Professor Rosalind Dixon, Anthony Mason Professor and Scientia Professor of Law and Director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at UNSW Sydney.

It is now widely understood that constitutions are interpreted and enforced by a wide range of actors—not simply courts. Moreover, different actors bring a variety of approaches and perspectives to bear in this process of interpretation. And much of constitutional theory has come to embrace this form of (what Professor Dixon calls) “constitutional polyvocality”, or the idea of “polyvocal constitutionalism”.

In her lecture, Professor Dixon explored different understandings of the idea of polyvocal constitutionalism, and how this thinking helps to understand and situate a range of new works in comparative constitutional theory. She also highlighted the strengths, and weaknesses, of these different theories, especially their capacity to respond to the current political moment—in which many previously stable democracies are seeing widespread forms of “abusive” constitutional change.

Watch the video below.

Past Borrin lectures have been given by:

• 2024: Professor James Lee - Once Upon A Time In The Common Law—Institutional Narratives And Legal Change
• 2023: Professor Aileen Kavanagh - Deconstructing Declarations
• 2019: Professor Martti Koskenniemi - History of the Law of Nations: Sovereignty and Property
• 2018: Martha C Nussbaum - Anger, Powerlessness, and the Politics of Blame
• 2017: Professor Neil S Siegel - The US Constitution, Constitutional Conventions and President Trump
• 2016: Professor Dawn Oliver - Constitutional Guardianship: The Roles of Public or State Sector Bodies
• 2015: Professor Peter Mirfield - The Right to Confrontation in Three Common Law Jurisdictions
• 2014: Professor Kent Roach - Remedies for Laws that Violate Human Rights: Breaking Down the Diochotomy of Strong and Weak Form Judicial Review
• 2013: Sir Paul Walker - Rights, Wrong and Proportionality
• 2011: Lord Collins of Mapesbury - With all due respect to the Judiciary?