When New Zealand’s Parliament legislates to the effect that law on some particular matter may only be enacted using a mandated procedure, can the New Zealand judiciary enforce this provision against a future Parliament that fails to comply with it? This question regarding the status and effect of such “manner and form” requirements has been a perennial topic of public law discussions, primarily in relation to the Electoral Act 1993, s 268 “entrenchment provision”. 2018 offered an apparent opportunity to confer a measure of certainty in this area of law. In Ngaronoa v Attorney-General, the NZ Supreme Court had to decide first whether a 2010 enactment removing the right to enrol to vote from all serving prisoners involved an amendment to one of s 268’s reserved provisions; and if so, whether the failure to pass that amendment by the required parliamentary supermajority rendered it invalid. However, the Court ultimately chose not to answer that latter question, leaving it open for the present. In the wake of Ngaronoa’s somewhat inconclusive outcome, this article examines why the issue of judicial enforcement of manner and form provisions still remains controversial in New Zealand. It does so by first setting the issue in a wider constitutional framework, explaining how the enforcement of provisions such as s 268 involves questions regarding the nature of parliamentary sovereignty and the role of the courts in defining this. The way in which these questions have been addressed over time in New Zealand and elsewhere — the pendulum swing of constitutional understandings, to use the Supreme Court’s term — is then outlined. Our purpose in doing so is to show that different views have waxed and waned over time, with the widely-shared contemporary interpretation of Parliament’s power to bind itself in law actually founded on a somewhat shaky basis. We then draw on this analysis to examine why the Supreme Court in Ngaronoa would have felt unable to resolve the particular question of enforceability, while also raising an as-yet unexamined question about how such enforcement would mesh with the statutorily guaranteed parliamentary privilege of non-interference in the internal affairs of the House.

中文翻译：

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追踪新西兰立法的钟摆摆动

当新西兰议会立法规定，关于某些特定事项的法律只能通过法定程序颁布时，新西兰司法机构能否对不遵守该规定的未来议会强制执行该规定？关于此类“方式和形式”要求的地位和效果的问题一直是公法讨论的常年话题，主要与 1993 年选举法第 268 条“巩固条款”有关。2018 年提供了一个明显的机会，可以在该法律领域赋予一定程度的确定性。在 Ngaronoa 诉总检察长一案中，新西兰最高法院必须首先决定 2010 年颁布的取消所有在役囚犯登记投票权的法案是否涉及对 268 条保留条款之一的修正；如果是这样，所要求的议会绝对多数未能通过该修正案是否使其无效。然而，法院最终选择不回答后一个问题，暂时将其保留。在 Ngaronoa 有点不确定的结果之后，本文探讨了为什么在新西兰对方式和形式条款的司法执行问题仍然存在争议。它首先将问题置于更广泛的宪法框架中，解释第 268 条等条款的执行如何涉及有关议会主权性质的问题以及法院在界定这一问题时的作用。然后概述了新西兰和其他地方随着时间的推移解决这些问题的方式——宪法理解的钟摆摆动，使用最高法院的术语——然后概述。我们这样做的目的是表明，随着时间的推移，不同的观点有增有减，而当代对议会在法律中约束自己的权力的广泛认同的解释实际上建立在一个有点不稳定的基础上。然后，我们利用这一分析来研究为什么 Ngaronoa 的最高法院会感到无法解决可执行性的特定问题，同时还提出了一个尚未审查的问题，即这种执行如何与法定保障的非议会特权相结合？干涉议会内政。