Jabarkan Sovereignty dari Perjanjian Waitangi dalam bahasa melayu

Although the Treaty was considered to be Māori consenting to British sovereignty over the whole country, the actual proclamation of sovereignty was made by Hobson on 21 May 1840 (the North Island by treaty and the South by discovery – Hobson was unaware his agents were collecting signatures for the Treaty in the South Island at this stage). This was in response to New Zealand Company attempts to establish a separate colony in Wellington. The proclamation was published four months after the signing of the Treaty, in the New Zealand Advertiser and Bay Of Islands Gazette issue of 19 June 1840, the proclamation "asserts on the grounds of Discovery, the Sovereign Rights of Her Majesty over the Southern Islands of New Zealand, commonly called 'The Middle Island' (South Island) and 'Stewart’s Island' (Stewart Island/Rakiura); and the Island, commonly called 'The Northern Island', having being ceded Sovereignty to Her Majesty."

In the 1877 Wi Parata v Bishop of Wellington judgement, Prendergast argued that the Treaty was a 'simple nullity' in terms of transferring sovereignty from Māori to Britain. This remained the legal orthodoxy until at least the 1970s. Since then, legal commentators have argued that whatever the state of Māori government in 1840, the British had acknowledged Māori sovereignty with the Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand in 1835. Therefore, if both parties had agreed on the Treaty it was valid, in a pragmatic if not necessarily a legal sense.

There has been some popular acceptance of the idea that the Treaty transferred sovereignty since the early twentieth century. Popular histories of New Zealand and the Treaty often claimed that the Treaty was an example of British benevolence and therefore an honourable contract.

The Waitangi Tribunal, in Te Paparahi o te Raki inquiry (Wai 1040) is in the process of considering the Māori and Crown understandings of He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga / The Declaration of Independence 1835 and Te Tiriti o Waitangi / the Treaty of Waitangi 1840.  This aspect of the inquiry raises issues as to the nature of sovereignty and whether the Maori signatories to the Treaty of Waitangi intended to transfer sovereignty.