First New Zealand Senior Counsel Appointed

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New Zealand has appointed the its first Senior Counsel. The title is given to senior barristers (trial lawyers) in some former British colonies in place of Queen’s Counsel. Both New Zealand and Australia now use the term, although both have Britain’s hereditary head of state as their national figurehead. The New Zealand republican movement welcomed the news as evidence that their country’s legal profession is catching up with their peers elsewhere.
Senior barristers in the UK are still known as Queen’s Counsel. However, in Northern Ireland they now have the freedom to refuse to take an oath of loyalty to the feudal head of state.


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