Professor Bruce Harris has left an indelible mark on public law in New Zealand and across the common law world. In particular, his suggestion that there exists a 'third source' of executive action, in addition to statutory and prerogative powers, has influenced scholarship and judicial decisions in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. In this Festschrift, leading commentators explore key themes from his work. The first theme is the nature of executive power. Claire Charters argues that the future New Zealand constitution must pay greater attention to Maori legal concepts and substantive protections for tangata whenua. She suggests that a pressing concern is holding the Executive to account and restraining its power, particularly vis-a-vis Maori. Edward Willis examines the legitimate extent of 'third source' powers in the context of constitutional pragmatism. Three sections discuss issues concerning the judiciary. In the first section, Nicola Wheen discusses the problems inherent in ambiguous standards of environmental protection. The second section deals with judicial method and creativity. John Ip argues that the remedy of declarations of inconsistency with enumerated rights amounts to justifiable judicial creativity; Taylor Burgess critiques courts' unwillingness to lead social change, while Paul Rishworth examines the creativity inherent in judicial restraint. Caroline Foster extends the volume's analysis to international law, arguing that creativity by international courts and tribunals has given rise to global regulatory standards. The third section addresses judicial appointment and accountability. Sir Edmund Thomas argues that more independence is required in judicial appointments' processes, while ATH Smith argues that more protections are needed to protect judicial independence. The final theme concerns the future of the unwritten constitution. John Dawson explores the place of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi), the founding agreement between the Crown and Maori, in New Zealand's constitutional arrangements. Paul Craig explores the difference in the modalities of constitutional change between written and unwritten constitutions. Finally, Sam Bookman discusses the role of constitutional scholars in the unwritten constitution. As courts and legislatures around the world grapple with the changing demands made of public law, this volume addresses important questions about the powers of the state, the role of judges, and Crown-Indigenous relations. This book engages with these questions through a distinctive approach that is both pragmatic and nuanced. This volume is indispensable for students, scholars and practitioners engaged in the study of common law constitutions in New Zealand and beyond.

This series of volumes aims to provide an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of literature and religion, concerned with the fundamentally important issues of the imagination, literary perceptions and an understanding of poetics for theology and religious studies, and the underlying religious implications in so much literature and literary criticism. This introduction to the theatre also attempts to offer a meditation on the theatricality of the Incarnation. Arguing that both biblical and dramatic texts should be approached with a theatrical rather than a literary imagination, the author explores theatrical history, looking at plays as diverse as the medieval Cornish "Ordinalia" and Rostand's romantic "Cyrano de Bergerec". At the same time, he observes the comic potential of the Gospel narratives and the affirmation of humanity entailed in the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation.

The international monetary system imploded during the Great Depression. As the conventional narrative goes, the collapse of the gold standard and the rise of competitive devaluation sparked a monetary war that sundered the system, darkened the decade, and still serves as a warning to policymakers today. But this familiar tale is only half the story. With the Tripartite Agreement of 1936, Britain, America, and France united to end their monetary war and make peace. This agreement articulated a new vision, one in which the democracies promised to consult on exchange rate policy and uphold a liberal international system - at the very time fascist forces sought to destroy it. Max Harris explores this little-known but path-breaking and successful effort to revolutionize monetary relations, tracing the evolution of the monetary system in the twilight years before the Second World War and demonstrating that this history is not one solely of despair.

This introduction to the theatre also attempts to offer a meditation on the theatricality of the Incarnation. Arguing that both biblical and dramatic texts should be approached with a theatrical rather than a literary imagination, the author explores theatrical history.

For centuries, the Feast of Fools has been condemned and occasionally celebrated as a disorderly, even transgressive Christian festival, in which reveling clergy elected a burlesque Lord of Misrule, presided over the divine office wearing animal masks or women's clothes, sang obscene songs, swung censers that gave off foul-smelling smoke, played dice at the altar, and otherwise parodied the liturgy of the church. Afterward, they would take to the streets, howling, issuing mock indulgences, hurling manure at bystanders, and staging scurrilous plays. The problem with this popular account intriguing as it may be is that it is wrong.

In Sacred Folly, Max Harris rewrites the history of the Feast of Fools, showing that it developed in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries as an elaborate and orderly liturgy for the day of the Circumcision (1 January) serving as a dignified alternative to rowdy secular New Year festivities. The intent of the feast was not mockery but thanksgiving for the incarnation of Christ. Prescribed role reversals, in which the lower clergy presided over divine office, recalled Mary's joyous affirmation that God "has put down the mighty from their seat and exalted the humble." The "fools" represented those chosen by God for their lowly status.

The feast, never widespread, was largely confined to cathedrals and collegiate churches in northern France. In the fifteenth century, high-ranking clergy who relied on rumor rather than firsthand knowledge attacked and eventually suppressed the feast. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historians repeatedly misread records of the feast; their erroneous accounts formed a shaky foundation for subsequent understanding of the medieval ritual. By returning to the primary documents, Harris reconstructs a Feast of Fools that is all the more remarkable for being sanctified rather than sacrilegious."

"Dr. Harris has preempted a field almost unto himself: the study of contemporary festivals that have their origins in tradition, history, and the great religious celebrations of the past.... [This book] represents a masterful achievement." -- Milla Cozart Riggio, James J. Goodwin Professor of English, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut

With a riotous mix of saints and devils, street theater and dancing, and music and fireworks, Christian festivals are some of the most lively and colorful spectacles that occur in Spain and its former European and American possessions. That these folk celebrations, with roots reaching back to medieval times, remain vibrant in the high-tech culture of the twenty-first century strongly suggests that they also provide an indispensable vehicle for expressing hopes, fears, and desires that people can articulate in no other way.

In this book, Max Harris explores and develops principles for understanding the folk theology underlying patronal saints' day festivals, feasts of Corpus Christi, and Carnivals through a series of vivid, first-hand accounts of these festivities throughout Spain and in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Peru, Trinidad, Bolivia, and Belgium. Paying close attention to the signs encoded in folk performances, he finds in these festivals a folk theology of social justice that-- however obscured by official rhetoric, by distracting theories of archaic origin, or by the performers' own need to mask their resistance to authority-- is often in articulate and complex dialogue with the power structures that surround it. This discovery sheds important new light on the meanings of religious festivals celebrated from Belgium to Peru and onthe sophisticated theatrical performances they embody.

IN villages and towns across Spain and its former New World colonies, local performers stage mock battles between Spanish Christians and Moors or Aztecs that range from brief sword dances to massive street theatre lasting several days. The performances officially celebrate the triumph of Spanish Catholicism over its enemies. Such an explanation does not, however, account for the tradition's persistence for more than five hundred years nor for its widespread diffusion.

In this perceptive book, Max Harris seeks to understand the "puzzling and enduring passion" of both Mexicans and Spaniards for festivals of moros y cristianos. He begins by tracing the performances' roots in medieval Spain and showing how they came to be superimposed on the mock battles that had been part of pre-contact Aztec calendar rituals. Then, using James Scott's distinction between "public transcripts" and "hidden transcripts", he reveals how, in the hands of folk and indigenous performers, these spectacles of conquest became prophecies of the eventual reconquest of Mexico by the defeated Aztec peoples. Finally, he documents the early arrival of native American performance practices in Europe and the shift of moros y cristianos from court to folk tradition in Spain. Even today, as lively descriptions of current festivals make plain, mock battles between Aztecs, Moors, and Christians remain a remarkably sophisticated vehicle for the communal expression of dissent.

For centuries, the Feast of Fools has been condemned and occasionally celebrated as a disorderly, even transgressive Christian festival, in which reveling clergy elected a burlesque Lord of Misrule, presided over the divine office wearing animal masks or women's clothes, sang obscene songs, swung censers that gave off foul-smelling smoke, played dice at the altar, and otherwise parodied the liturgy of the church. Afterward, they would take to the streets, howling, issuing mock indulgences, hurling manure at bystanders, and staging scurrilous plays. The problem with this popular account intriguing as it may be is that it is wrong.

In Sacred Folly, Max Harris rewrites the history of the Feast of Fools, showing that it developed in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries as an elaborate and orderly liturgy for the day of the Circumcision (1 January) serving as a dignified alternative to rowdy secular New Year festivities. The intent of the feast was not mockery but thanksgiving for the incarnation of Christ. Prescribed role reversals, in which the lower clergy presided over divine office, recalled Mary's joyous affirmation that God "has put down the mighty from their seat and exalted the humble." The "fools" represented those chosen by God for their lowly status.

The feast, never widespread, was largely confined to cathedrals and collegiate churches in northern France. In the fifteenth century, high-ranking clergy who relied on rumor rather than firsthand knowledge attacked and eventually suppressed the feast. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historians repeatedly misread records of the feast; their erroneous accounts formed a shaky foundation for subsequent understanding of the medieval ritual. By returning to the primary documents, Harris reconstructs a Feast of Fools that is all the more remarkable for being sanctified rather than sacrilegious."