Waikato graduate receives prestigious William Georgetti Scholarship

UNIVERSITY OF Waikato law graduate Rebecca Rose was recently announced as one of four winners of the prestigious William Georgetti Scholarships, which are awarded each year for postgraduate study in a field that will benefit the social, cultural, and economic development of New Zealand.

Rose, who graduated from the University of Waikato with a conjoint Bachelor of Management Studies (Economics) and LLB (Hons) degree, has been awarded up to $45,000 to do a one-year Masters degree in law. She has yet to decide where she will study, but is considering Cambridge and Oxford in the United Kingdom, and Harvard, NYU, and Chicago in the United States.

She plans to study how economic analysis can be applied to law to make legal rules, policies, and institutions more efficient without significantly compromising recognised justice and equality aims. “In court, you see how legislation and its underlying policy structures relationships and influences the way people behave,” said Rose. “But whether people behave in a way that’s economically efficient is another matter. If you can change the incentives for people to act in particular ways, then you can potentially change social outcomes – and perhaps that way we can move New Zealand up the OECD rankings.” Rose said economic analysis often plays a big role in litigation in the United States and the United Kingdom, but is much less frequently relied on by New Zealand courts.

The former Fairfield College student has spent the last two and a half years in Wellington working at the Supreme Court as clerk to the Right Honourable Justice Blanchard and most recently at the Crown Law Office as intern to the Solicitor-General, Dr David Collins QC.

The William Georgetti Scholarships are managed by Public Trust and administered by the New Zealand Vice-Chancellors’ Committee. Four awards totalling $318,000 were made this year.

NZLawyer, 30 April 2010