Dame Alison Quentin-Baxter is a distinguished public and international lawyer. She began her career as a member, and later the head, of the Legal Division of what was then the Department of External Affairs, and was a New Zealand representative at a number of conferences on the making or application of international law. Later she was a lecturer in law at Victoria University of Wellington where she taught constitutional history and law. From 1987-94 she was the director of the New Zealand Law Commission. Dame Alison has acted as a constitutional advisor in New Zealand and other jurisdictions including Niue, Fiji, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Saint Helena. She is the author of a report leading to the Sovereign's issue of the 1983 Letters Patent Constituting the Office of Governor-General of New Zealand, Review of the Letters Patent 1917 Constituting the Office of Governor-General of New Zealand (Cabinet Office, 1980), editor of Recognising the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Institute of Policy Studies, 1998) and she has contributed a number of chapters and articles in books and journals. Dame Alison was appointed a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the law, and is a Companion of the Queen's Service Order.