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Category Archives: Human/Civil rights

Amnesty’s slow burn

February 15, 2010 – 6:30 am

This story has been something of a slow burn over here, but it’s starting to gain a bit of momentum now, to the stage where the implications are actually pretty awful:
A SENIOR official at Amnesty International has accused the charity of putting the human rights of Al-Qaeda terror suspects above those of their victims.
Gita Sahgal, [...]

By skepticlawyer | Also posted in England, Feminism, Free Speech, Law, Middle east | Tagged , , , , | Comments (31)

Restitution for wrongs and child pornography

February 3, 2010 – 9:01 pm

A friend alerted to me to an interesting case reported in the New York Times involving monetary restitution to a victim of child pornography  who goes by the pseudonym “Amy”.
When she was 8 or 9 years old, Amy’s uncle had filmed her in a series of pornographic photographs known as the “Misty” series. Amy is [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Children, Equity, Law, Restitution, Society, anthony daniels | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (16)

Lawyers for pets

February 1, 2010 – 9:14 am

Long-time readers of this blog will know I’m fascinated by animals and the law. A while back I wrote a post on the topic of pets who are recipients of bequests, and discussed the possibility of a rich animal being better represented before the law than a poor human being. The dog in that post [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Animals, Fark!, Law, Society | Tagged , , , | Comments (12)

Political correctness on campus

January 21, 2010 – 8:36 pm

Via a friend, I came across this interesting piece on political correctness on US university campuses. The author starts out with a salutary tale:
In 2007 a student working his way through college was found guilty of racial harassment for reading a book in public. Some of his co-workers had been offended by the book’s cover, [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Academia, Education, Free Speech, Literature, Personal liberty, Politics, Racism, Society | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (43)

The limits of law

January 19, 2010 – 9:07 pm

[Update: now cross posted at Online Opinion - 22/1/10]
One of the things that I’m thinking about in my PhD is the limits of law. What can law change? And more importantly, what can’t it change? Who enforces the law? Can we change the way in which people behave by regulating them more?
Via CoreEconomics, I came [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Economics, Law, Personal liberty, Society | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (48)

Oh, the squick, it burns…

January 17, 2010 – 1:03 am

I have never seen this film, and I’m not sure I want to see it either, as it seems to consist of humour that makes you excruciatingly uncomfortable at the same time as being funny.
Of course the premise is unbelievable: it is economically impossible for a state with significant chattel slavery ever to develop the [...]

By skepticlawyer | Also posted in Economics, History, Popular culture, Racism | Comments (4)

Wowsers are Winning

December 15, 2009 – 8:40 pm

Here at Skepticlawyer we’re shocked to see that the wowsers have apparently won the battle over compulsory internet censorship. The Age reports:
The Federal Government has announced it will proceed with controversial plans to censor the internet after Government-commissioned trials found filtering a blacklist of banned sites was accurate and would not slow down the internet.
But [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Blogging, Free Speech, Internet, Law, Media, Personal liberty, Politics, Public Policy, Society | Tagged , , | Comments (24)

Alien, not an Austr-alian

December 7, 2009 – 9:26 pm

Yet again, a somewhat doubtful aspect of Australia’s immigration policy has re-emerged into the spotlight. The Minister for Immigration revokes the visas of people who have lived for most of their lives in Australia, and then sends them back to their country of origin. The visas are revoked because of the criminal records of the [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Law, Personal liberty, Society | Tagged , , , | Comments (44)

The other stolen generation

November 16, 2009 – 6:16 am

Gordon Brown is to apologise for the UK’s role in sending thousands of its children to former colonies in the 20th century, the BBC has learned.
Under the Child Migrants Programme – which ended just 40 years ago – poor children were sent to a “better life” in Australia, Canada and elsewhere. But many were abused [...]

By DeusExMacintosh | Also posted in Funnies, History, Immigration, Politics, Public Policy | Comments (16)

Queers, Foucault, truth, justice and the law: guest post by Lorenzo

November 11, 2009 – 4:46 am

[Introduction by SL: Lorenzo is a blogger I admire; he writes quite a bit on Queer history, and also very wisely and thoughtfully on the 'method' of history and scholarship. His home blog is here. Now, I'm just a humble linguist and lawyer, but I've long suspected that a lot of historians have been led [...]

By skepticlawyer | Also posted in Guest Post, History, Law, Literature, anthony daniels | Tagged , , , , | Comments (69)