Is a New Zealander’s Home his Castle?

Abstract

Sir edward coke, writing in the sixteenth century, was able to assert with some truth that ‘a man’s house is his castle’. A little later in Semaine’s case, the Court of King’s Bench went further in declaring that ‘the house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress’. Much has changed since these statements were made. Castles have been replaced by bungalows on quarter-acre sections. The law too has been transformed. The common law was supreme in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Later it was challenged by statute law. The common law rights of a landowner have by now been submerged by such a mass of statutes, regulations and bylaws that no landowner can be fully aware of his rights or of the powers possessed by others over his land.