In a recent interview, everyone’s favourite extreme right wing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia remarked that he found it ‘absurd’ to think that authorities couldn’t torture an individual who had information about an imminent terrorist attack (another take). Picking up on the widespread belief that terrorists will hand themselves in for interrogation minutes before […]
Archive for the 'law' Category
U.S. Supreme Court Judge: ‘absurd’ not to punch suspects in the face, stick things under fingernails
13Feb08The Sydney Morning Herald and Catholic News tell us that judges and other members of the legal community in New South Wales recently participated in ‘Red Mass’, a European tradition in which members of the legal profession seek divine guidance for the courts.
The image of judges - wearing the robes which represent their role in […]
This is an extraordinary decision by the Industrial Relations Commission. Telstra has had its right to sack an employee upheld, where the basis of the sacking was that she had sex with another employee (or employees, it seems) outside of work hours and then refused to tell her benevolent employer corporation the details.
In the first […]
I just became aware of this piece of legislation, recently introduced into the South Australian Parliament: the Serious Crime (Control) Bill 2007 (SA). You can see the bill here in Rich Text Format or here in PDF.
This legislation is ostensibly aimed at bikie gangs, but it goes a lot further than that, and doesn’t […]
verballing 101
08Dec07The South Australian Government has gone ahead with legislation to ban David Hicks from selling his story. He’s still allowed to tell his story, but he’s not allowed to sell it. Lucky him. Presumably he’ll be able to find a job with no problems - after all, he was never convicted of anything by a […]
Confirming that the United States still regards the phrase “war on terror” to mean “license for continuing and willful insanity”, a lawyer representing the U.S. in a high profile case in England has indicated that the U.S. view is that the covert abduction of foreign nationals in order to bring them to America to face […]
demanding equality in pre-crime
07Sep07Britain’s Lord Justice Sedley has caused quite a fuss by suggesting that all Britons (and any visitors to the Isles) should be added to the British criminal DNA database (alternative article).
Unsurprisingly the suggestion has caused all kinds of hysteria which seems to rather miss his Lordship’s point: it’s fundamentally inequitable to have some people in […]
trade your vote in for a new one
08Aug07This is an interesting development in the US - an appellate court has ruled that it is legal to ’swap’ votes, and also to facilitate the swapping of votes.
The idea emerged in the 2000 presidential election campaign - supporters of third-party candidate Ralph Nader and supporters of Al Gore would strategically swap votes to maximise […]
This week is turning into a big week for the notion of the separation of powers in Australia. As you (should) know, the separation of power between the judiciary and the parliament/executive is one of the devices included in our Constitution to prevent abuses of power by those who govern on our behalf.
In addition to the clash […]
You may have come across this story over the last few months - one Mr Hew Griffiths, an Australian software pirate - was extradited to the United States and prosecuted for offences under US copyright law. He subsequently pleaded guilty in a court in Virginia.
Some insightful commentary is here, on LawFont:
But we should be […]
fence posts
11Jul07More than six out of ten people regularly commit criminal acts (in Britain, at least). Democratic governments seem to regard legislation criminalising particular forms of behaviour as the default, and indeed only, way of dealing with most problems and many things which are only perceived to be problems.
In that context, here are two interesting […]
how to undo 61 years of progress
21Jun07This is a heartwarming little story - the process put in place to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay lacks some of the essential elements of fairness that were afforded even to the senior Nazis tried at Nuremberg. That is according to Henry King Jnr, who was chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, where a number of […]
Further to previous posts (one, two), here’s some great “Jesus with the little dinosaurs” art (thanks to KO):
Meanwhile Legal Eagle points to this article on the actual details of the legal battle in the Ham v Anti-Ham lawsuit.
You will recall our friend Ham, curator of the Creation “Museum”, from the story about dinosaurs with saddles - he who told us that T-Rex ate grass until “the fall” and other such nuggets of wisdom.
It seems that some of Ham’s former followers have decided to wrest back control of their (pre)destiny as an unthinking […]
As you are no doubt aware, David Hicks is now back in Australia and locked away in a maximum security prison in Adelaide. The South Australian government in its wisdom has now announced legislation to stop Hicks from selling his story to the media.
One question which immediately arises is: does such legislation amount to […]
