Universities New Zealand Te Pōkai Tara is delighted to announce that Auckland lawyer Jessica Fenton has been awarded the 2023 New Zealand Law Foundation Ethel Benjamin Scholarship.Jessica Fenton
The award was established in 1997 by the New Zealand Law Foundation to mark the centenary of the admission of Ethel
Benjamin as the first woman barrister and solicitor in New Zealand, and only the second women in the British Empire to
become a lawyer. For over 25 years, this award, valued at up to $30,00, has supported postgraduate research in law that
aims to protect and promote the legal interests of the New Zealand public.
This year’s award recipient, Jessica Fenton, has been granted admission to Yale Law School, consistently ranked for more
than 30 years as the best Law School in the United States.
Jessica graduated in 2019 with a BA and LLB from the University of Auckland - Waipapa Taumata Rau and has spent the last
four years working as a Judge’s Clerk in the High Court and as a Crown prosecutor. That experience has given her useful
insights into the New Zealand criminal justice system.
While this work has been inspiring, she comments, “My work is challenging and rewarding, but these experiences have also
demonstrated to me the extent to which the criminal system in New Zealand is failing many of those it aims to serve,
particularly Māori.”
Jessica is chiefly interested in the intersection between Indigenous, public, and criminal law. Her earlier academic
work focused on the concept of relational sovereignty – a system where governance is shared between Māori and the Crown,
as originally envisioned in Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
While at Yale, Jessica plans to write a research paper that takes a comparative approach to Indigenous law in the US and
New Zealand.
Ultimately, Jessica’s academic and professional goal is to make a meaningful contribution to the development of criminal
law and policy in New Zealand. By pursuing further studies overseas, she will have the opportunity to build a deeper and
richer understanding of the law and bring new international perspectives to bear on her thinking about domestic legal
challenges.
Alongside law, Fenton’s other great passion is poetry. She has been involved in the poetry community in Aotearoa
extensively over the last few years and her work has appeared in several publications. Her poetry often addresses
important legal issues, and she enjoys the opportunity to communicate her message in a different medium beyond the legal
community.
“Many of the issues I address in my poetry have significant ramifications for our entire society, so being able to get
that message out to a variety of audiences is incredibly important to me.”
The New Zealand Law Foundation Ethel Benjamin Scholarships are awarded to postgraduate women who hold a law degree and
have been accepted into a postgraduate law course in either New Zealand or overseas. The award is administered by
Universities New Zealand on behalf of the New Zealand Law Foundation.Applications for the Ethel Benjamin scholarship close on 1 March each year.
More information about the scholarship is available on the Universities New Zealand - Te Pōkai Tara website here
Information about past recipients is available at the New Zealand Law Foundation