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Category Archives: Personal liberty

The Statue of Liberty is very green

February 23, 2010 – 9:34 am

It is likely impossible to say anything new about New York so I am not going to try. This post is a placeholder and an apology for not being around the blog very much, something likely to continue for the rest of this week while I see the sights.
Briefly, I attended a conference in Washington [...]

By skepticlawyer | Also posted in General, Immigration | Tagged , , , , | Comments (8)

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, Australian internet filter, Education, Free Speech, Human/Civil rights, Literature, Politics, 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, Human/Civil rights, Law, Society | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (48)

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, Human/Civil rights, Internet, Law, Media, 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 Human/Civil rights, Law, Society | Tagged , , , | Comments (44)

More duty to restrain drink drivers

November 13, 2009 – 6:32 am

I did a post at the beginning of the year on the liability of publicans to restrain drunk patrons from driving home. To recap briefly: a drunken patron (Mr Scott) died after his motorcycle crashed, and his wife sued the licensee for failing to restrain him. A majority of the Full Court of the Supreme [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Law, Public Policy, Society | Tagged , , , , | Comments (18)

O Mistress Mine!

November 9, 2009 – 8:05 pm

I was fascinated to see that the first case under the new s 4AA of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) has been settled out of court. According to the recent article in the Herald Sun:
A cheating husband has paid his former lover more than $100,000 under Australia’s new “mistress laws”.
In the first known case [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Children, Economics, Equity, Law, Marriage, Public Policy | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (27)

It’s always ‘for the children’

September 7, 2009 – 7:51 am

Something about giant inflatable gorillas… and gay marriage.

By skepticlawyer | Also posted in Economics, Popular culture | Tagged | Comments (7)

Social networking technology and employers

August 18, 2009 – 3:43 pm

Deckard: Replicants are like any other machine. They’re either a benefit or a hazard. If they’re a benefit, it’s not my problem.
Bladerunner, 1982
Very much the same thing could be said about social networking technology as about replicants. The technology can have both positive and negative ramifications.
A few times over the last week, I’ve read articles [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Free Speech, Internet, Law, Media, Popular culture, Public Policy, Society | Tagged , , , , | Comments (34)

Are homosexuals still Toryphobic? (with bonus RDM* sprinkles)

July 5, 2009 – 2:43 am

Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw has said “a deep strain of homophobia still exists on the Conservative benches”.
Mr Bradshaw, one of three gay men currently in the cabinet, made the comments as a new poll suggested more gay people were turning to the Tories. Chris Bryant, another gay minister, said: “If gays vote Tory they will [...]

By DeusExMacintosh | Also posted in Fark!, Funnies, Law, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (19)