Outside Chris Bishop’s office in the Beehive hangs a framed copy of a court judgment. Last week, in a speech to the Law Association, the Attorney-General explained why he keeps it there.

The case is Fitzgerald v Muldoon, a judgment now fifty years old. Prime Minister Robert Muldoon had announced, without asking Parliament, that New Zealanders could stop paying into the previous Labour government’s compulsory superannuation scheme. A man named Fitzgerald took Muldoon to court and won. Chief Justice Wild ruled that a Prime Minister cannot switch off a law by announcing it. Only Parliament can do that.

Wild relied on the English Bill of Rights 1688, passed when Parliament had had enough of kings setting aside laws they disliked. Three centuries on, it still bound a New Zealand Prime Minister.

Bishop quotes the case for a wider reason. Just as a Prime Minister cannot set aside a statute, neither can an unelected judge invent one Parliament has not.

Recent decisions of the Supreme Court, our highest court, have put that principle under strain. Climate activist Mike Smith sued six New Zealand companies, asking the courts to order them to cut their emissions. No court in the English-speaking world had done that.

The Court of Appeal threw the claims out before trial. Climate change, it held, was for Parliament and for treaties between countries, not for courts to settle one case at a time.

Yet the Supreme Court revived the claim. It did not decide that Smith would win, only that his case could go to trial. So, who is legally responsible for greenhouse gases, a question reaching every business and household, was left to years of court cases.

Parliament has now stepped in. The Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill will bar all such claims, including Smith’s.

But Bishop went further than defending the Bill. Parliament, he said, has been “too passive” about court decisions, taking the law in an “unhappy direction”. It should write laws more clearly and, when the law takes a wrong turn, pass a new one saying so.

Clearer drafting would help. But it might not be enough. As I argued in my 2024 report, Who Makes the Law?, Parliament must also correct the courts when they overstep.

The Bill shows one way. My report set out others: guardrails in key statutes and changes to how judges are appointed.

Parliament makes the law. It is encouraging to hear the Attorney-General say so.