“it would be rather remarkable to permit two laymen to overrule a lawyer in a criminal case.” – isaacs j ( later chief justice and first Australian-born governor-general) in the wheat case (nsw v cth (1915) 20 clr 54) one of the leading cases defining the judicial power.

Contrary to my long-standing belief (as of a month ago now) that neither Kirby nor Hayden JJ have written a binding High Court judgment (or at least an influential one), I recently read the case of Romeo v NT Conservation Commission.

This is a double-whammy because not only was a Kirby judgment quoted in my textbook, he was not in dissent and made valid points. Furthermore, Hayne J’s judgment was also quoted. He said nothing of particular interest.

Damn.

Hahahaha. A few posts ago, I mentioned the Australian Sex Party was posting a candidate for my electorate of Bradfield (seat of the former Opposition Leader and also formerly Minister for Education then Defence, Brendan Nelson).

I said that she was a “former law student turned “gen Y feminist pole dancer.” I joked that she would never fit into a stodgy suburban area like the North Shore. I was wrong. She apparently has a history of fitting into stodgy places, like a top tier law firm – Allens Arthur Robinson. Of course back then she sported the more North Shore name of Marianna Leishman. She now goes by the name Zahra Stardust.

Well, I never.

Hahaha

This is honestly the most hilarious thing I’ve ever read: http://www.smh.com.au/national/rees-spies-on-ministers-20091031-hqpm.html

Nathan Rees, having declared war on drugs, corruption, speeding and proper planning laws, has also declared a war on his ministers. Because honestly, this whole thing reads like a sketch from the Chasers’ War on Everything. He’s decided to phone-tap his ministers, steal information from private computers and then withhold it from them.

I’m just imagining the arguments that always happen when draconian laws are passed:

Civil libertarian/sensible person: “How would you like it if they did this to you?”

Politician: “But I’m a law-abiding citizen, they would never do this to me. I trust my government to act responsibly.”

Lucky we have the responsible Rees government in charge.

Please bring back Bob Carr… or in lieu of that, could we have John Brogden? Or we could replace the whole government with an inert gas. That way it can do absolutely no damage. Unlike Rees or O’Farrell.

PS: I should add. My source, as always, is the SMH, and one should always take things they say with a grain of salt. They have an irritating tendency to mix editorialism and content. Perhaps it really is just a way to measure the telephone usage. If only I had an authoritative independent source to inform me…

Right-wing shock jock Lou Dobbs has always struck me as a very perceptive man. He’s like those detectives you see in movies who see a crime scene and instantly know whodunnit and just need to prove it.

Except he’s better.

He don’t need proof. Proof is a tool of the trial lawyer lobby, one of the biggest donators to the Democratic Party.

So when someone fired a bullet at Lou Dobbs’ house, he instantly knew who the culprit was: immigrants.

A less astute person might have weighed up the facts for and against, all the possible suspects. For instance, a reasonable person in Lou’s position might have considered the following facts:

(1) Lou lives in one of the most crime-ridden countries in the world because it is unconstitutional to ban giving rocket launchers to the ‘militia’. And by militia, I mean people. Any people.

(2) Lou lives in a hunting reserve

(3) the bullet came from a hunting rifle

(4) the bullet was aimed at a brick wall and not a window

You see, that’s the problem with the reasonable person test – it doesn’t account for those with superlative minds, like Lou Dobbs. It is a well-known fact that Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People. And what type of people kill people? Immigrants.

I mean look, there are clearly many groups of people who are vile and abhorrent to society. But illegal immigrants are estimated to number 13 million. That’s almost 4% of the population of the US. Which means they are marginally more likely to kill you than my second suspect class – homosexuals, who thankfully only make up 2-3% of the US population.

Hunters come nowhere near that number (despite their influence on Congress). Besides, hunters are such nice people they could never kill. Humans, that is. They could never kill humans.

I mean the only fact we need to know is this. Lou Dobbs’ assassin was dumb. In trying to kill his wife, he didn’t shoot through the large clear glass windows at her, or at Lou. He shot a wall. Only an idiot would expect to be able to assasinate someone through a wall, or someone grossly uneducated about guns. In other words, an immigrant. Or a Democrat.

Australian politics has always been dominated by the big two political parties and always have been. Occasionally we get the occasional minor party which focusses all its attention on one fringe issue: we’ve had parties whose sole policy was to oppose poker machines, (Nick Xenophon, independent for SA) opposing smoking,  supporting gun rights (Shooters party, NSW upper house) pro-4WD parties (the 4WD party, NSW upper house) . I think one had the major policy of allowing camping on beaches. The most fringe of all was the one supporting ‘democracy’ (don’t worry, they’re gone now). Honestly, who would support that and keeping politicians honest. Foolish really.

But the newest party has got to be one of the more interesting. The Australian Sex Party. Finally, a fringe issue that has overwhelming majority support from the electorate. Sex.

Jokes aside, does anyone know anything about them? They’re standing a candidate in Bradfield… a former law student turned “gen Y feminist pole dancer.”  That respectability should win her plaudits in the staid suburbs of the North Shore. Perhaps being part of the oldest profession in the world will endear her to the incredibly aged people populating the endless retirement villages we have here. Their policies, quite unremarkably, revolve around freedom of speech for sex-related things. All terribly controversial, but not particularly interesting nor likely to do much good for Australia should it pass. Congratulations, you may now stand in the nude in the streets. Now what?

Amusingly, their tactics in defending abortion are one of the more novel I’ve seen. Trying to defend the most controversial topic in the world with another one of the more controversial topics: no fault divorce. lol. I can see this party going far.

“To enact national pregnancy termination laws along the same lines as divorce law — which allow for legal, no-fault and guilt-free processes for women seeking termination.”

NB: I think this runs into constitutional issues too. What head of power do they wish to enact their abortion laws under? (Resisting temptation to make joke about the Sex Party being good at giving heads of power).

Once in a while, the world makes me smile. The Sydney Morning Herald has admitted that it was wrong. Not in the apologetic way that an ethical person might. But its a big first step for a newspaper which is used to only apologising under court order on page 15 in size 5 font for its front cover capital letter defamation.

The Herald has long been attacking the incompetent Rees government on various fronts, justifiably given how incompetent they probably are. But one constant source of criticism and newspaper sales is that the planned Rozelle Metro line which the Herald has constantly insinuated should be replaced with a heavy rail service. It is said, light rail is a waste of time, population growth will mean it has to be replaced by a heavy rail in a few years anyway because it doesn’t have the capacity. Surely.

So its good to see the SMH fronting up now and admitting that not only will the Rozelle line not be overcrowded. It is now vociferously alleging that the Rozelle line will be grossly undercrowded:  http://www.smh.com.au/national/5b-metro-counting-on-ghost-passengers-20091025-heoc.html So props to you, SMH. It takes real talent to apologise and to attack those to whom you are apologising at the same time.

Now I don’t know if the Rozelle metro line is good or bad. I’m deprived of any independent, unbiased journalists to inform me either way. But surely these arguments are inconsistent. This article seems to insinuate that the Rozelle line exists wholly to take pressure off the three main city rail stations of Wynyard, Town Hall and Central. But let’s point out the obvious – Rozelle is not anywhere near any of these stations! It’s in the opposite direction. The Rozelle line exists to funnel people from the inner city into the CBD so they can work. It seems a competent idea to build up the public transport to Rozelle so that we can increase the density of housing in Sydney. The facts may support this argument. They may not. They may be the result of an incompetent transport minister not being held to account by an equally incompetent transport shadow minister. Gee, if only I had an independent, ethical source of news which I could rely on to inform me so I could decide by myself.

So, I made a wordcloud for this blog. Notice how the biggest and third biggest words are ‘mortgage’ and ‘mortgages’. The 2nd word is market. haha I guess I may be a taaad capitalist.

The first non-boring word: Now.

Oh dear.

My law student  friends will already know that the UK is replacing its court of final appeal, the Judicial Board of the House of Lords with a new court. What they will not know is that America is claiming this as a victory for themselves: see Wall St Journal article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125573382497890937.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us#

You see as  Justice Breyer (Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, I have to remind you cause he’s the forgettable one) says, “over 200 years or more of our Supreme Court history, the cases are filled with references that show our law is based on English law. They are perhaps taking a leaf from our book.”

You see, the UK decided to rename its highest court to the Supreme Court of the UK. Apparently Americans thought that sounded too similar to the Supreme Court of the US, and have pre-emptively decided that they were copying the Americans. Don’t worry about the fact that the highest courts in the former British Empire are also called the Supreme Court (Australia being an axception,our state courts were already called Supreme Courts and we thought it would be silly to have both our federal and state courts called the same thing).

They also proclaim that this is following the American-style separation of powers. Its not really important that the Westminster Principle of Minsterial Responsibility still ties the executive and the legislature into one branch. Nor is it important that the UK only split its legislature and its judicature because it joined the EU, and the EU Human Rights Charter forces them to split the two. Nor indeed is it important that the very notion of separation of powers derives from Baron de Montesequieu’s (somewhat short-sighted) observations of the UK’s system of government.

And let’s not also forget that the whole change is remarkably controversial because, as critics all say, the UK risks having a completely dysfunctional system of government like the US where the judges and the legislature vie for power.

However, more amusingly, this article also reveals the deep shame Americans feel about splitting off from the Empire in the first place. Dangit, they say, we should have done it peacefully like the Australians, the Canadians, the South Africans, the New Zealanders… all this guilt. Maybe that’s why, as the WSJ notes, the SCOTUS still regularly cites English precedent. Scalia J cited 10 UK cases in one 2008 decision. One the left, Stevens J cited English decisions going back to the Magna Carta in a 2004 Guantanamo case. On the other hand, the UK courts rarely bother consulting American cases. Funny that.

Hmm… so I looked at the statistics for this site today, which I don’t often do. One observation: you are love scandals and intrigue. Balanced, fair reporting just irks you.

My post “lawl subprime” was badly written – I didn’t edit it in the slightest before posting. But it was scathing, sarcastic and bitter. My post “Balance” was well-written (at least by my very mediocre standards). I edited it (a bit). But it was written in a calm measured tone. It also had a very bland title.

The result? The badly written, divisive infotainment post had 6 times as many hits as the factually-based and balanced post. Now I know why Fox News and Keith Olbermann (left-wing anchor on MSNBC) are so popular.

Now, if you’ll excuse me I’m going to buy some shares in News Ltd, and dump my shares in whoever publishes the Economist.