August 31, 2011 – 2:40 pm
Just handed down at 2:15pm today: the High Court has declared the Malaysian “Solution” to be illegal in Plaintiff M70/2011 v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship [2011] HCA 32. I shall shamelessly reproduce the High Court’s summary of reasons available on their site — more detailed commentary (I hope) to follow [on which, see UPDATE […]
By Legal Eagle
|
Posted in Immigration, Law
|
Tagged asylum seekers, Australian Labor Party, Australian politics, deportation, High Court, High Court of Australia, Immigration, Julia Gillard, Law, Malaysian solution, refugees, visas
|
August 30, 2011 – 9:06 pm
Just because we have freedom of speech doesn’t mean we get to say anything we like, wherever we like. If people don’t like swear bears (to take one example) on their property, then those swear bears will receive no further invitations to visit. This is not a constraint on freedom of speech, but the enforcement […]
August 30, 2011 – 2:46 am
Private security firm G4S has sacked two members of staff who tagged a man’s false leg allowing him to remove it and break a court-imposed curfew. The pair were fooled by Christopher Lowcock, 29, who wrapped the prosthetic limb in a bandage when G4S set up the system at his Rochdale home. He was then […]
By DeusExMacintosh
|
Posted in Britain, Funnies, Law, Politics, Technology, Welfare
|
Tagged bret ravenhill, christopher lowcock, criminal justice, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, DWP, electronic tag, false leg, G4S, group 4, Iain Duncan Smith, incapacity benefit, ministry of justice, nick buckles, the work programme
|
August 29, 2011 – 6:39 am
Crown prosecutors, as a general rule, do not drop high-profile cases for shits and giggles. If an accused has been arraigned before a Grand Jury (common in the US), or the matter has sailed through committal proceedings (Australia and England) or satisfied the Examining Magistrate or Procurator Fiscal (Scotland and most of the Continent), then […]
By skepticlawyer
|
Posted in Law
|
Tagged Alexander Volokh, attrition rate, Blackstone, Christopher Caldwell, conviction rate, Cyrus Vance Jr, Diallo, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, DSK, france, French socialists, Grand jury, International Bar Association, Joan Illuzi-Orbon, John 'Artie' McConnell, Le Monde, Motion to dismiss, Nafissatou Diallo, Robert Nozick, Tristane Banon, Ulpian
|
August 26, 2011 – 7:38 pm
Since getting linked to by three large blogs (Butterflies & Wheels, The Money Illusion and Marginal Revolution), our blog stats have gone up considerably (as in, they’ve doubled), and many of the new people seem to have stayed, at least as lurkers. With that in mind, it seems like a good idea to revive the […]
August 26, 2011 – 10:32 am
You have to feel pretty sorry for the New South Wales couple who thought that they had a winning scratchie ticket. The rules of the ticket were that if the word and the picture matched, the person got the stipulated sum of money: Bale Kuzmanovski felt an ”explosion of elation” when the instant scratchie his […]
By Legal Eagle
|
Posted in Law, Society
|
Tagged bathe, breach of contract, contract law, damages, damages for disappointment and distress, Full Federal Court, gambling, incorporation of contractual terms, Kuzmanovskis, lotteries, Lotteries Act, lottery ticket, misleading and deceptive conduct, NSW Lotteries, scratchie ticket, swim
|
August 26, 2011 – 1:38 am
JULIA Gillard has moved from defence to attack over the Craig Thomson scandal, accusing the opposition of using “Liberal mates” to exert political pressure on the NSW police to investigate the Labor MP. As Liberal senator George Brandis came under pressure for telephoning Australian Federal Police Commissioner Tony Negus over the affair, Labor sources said […]
By DeusExMacintosh
|
Posted in Australia, Funnies, Law, Politics
|
Tagged australian federal police, Australian Labor Party, Australian Liberal Party, canberra, Craig Thomson, dobell, Fair Work Australia, george brandis, health services union, Julia Gillard, mike gallacher, NSW Labor Party, prostitution, stinking hypocrisy, Tony Abbott, tony negus
|
August 24, 2011 – 7:21 pm
Legal systems, like bower-birds, collect curiosities. Often those curiosities are of a particular type, anachronisms, for example — much as the bower-bird prefers objects to be blue and shiny. The anachronisms hang around on the books and provoke mirth among lawyers (we are often the only ones to know that they are there, buried in […]
August 22, 2011 – 9:04 pm
Tony Blair today attacked claims that this summer’s riots were fuelled by “moral decline” and warned that talk of a broken society risked damaging Britain’s reputation. In a rare intervention into domestic politics, the former Prime Minister issued a stark warning that ”muddle-headed analysis” of the recent riots by left and right-wing politicians was in […]
By DeusExMacintosh
|
Posted in England, Funnies, Human/Civil rights, Law, Personal liberty, Politics, Popular culture, Public Policy, Welfare
|
Tagged #england riots, Bill of Rights, cash for peerages, conservative party, david cameron, foreign policy, george bush, habeas corpus, house of commons, house of lords, human rights, iraq war, Julia Gillard, labour party, london riots, MPs expenses scandal, national debt, privatisation, tony blair, UK coalition government, UK constitution, UK parliament, UK politics, USA
|
August 22, 2011 – 8:26 am
English has the largest vocabulary of all languages, so it can probably afford to lose a few words. According to the people who publish the Collins English Dictionary, charabanc is on the way out, as are aerodrome and alienism. The latter is an old word for the study of mental illness, and when I read […]