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Thread: The Law and Various Other Lawyerings

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    Commissar Caligula_'s Avatar The Ecstasy of Potatoes
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    Default The Law and Various Other Lawyerings


    At long last, whether you want it or not and whether you're vaguely interested in it or not, there is a thread to post about the law in the comfort of the Thema Devia!!!
    Now obviously (if anyone is actually interested in this thread) we're gonna have to abide by the TWC rules so we probably can't talk about the graphic details of any cases.


    The Cardinal George Pell caseThis thread was kicked off by Post 5121 to 5133 in The Chat Thread where Akar and I talked about Cardinal George Pell's appeal against his conviction for indecent acts against children. This appeal occured in Australia, in Victoria's Supreme Court, Court of Appeal on the 5th and 6th of June. The appeal was livestreamed, which is a very rare occurrence and until Pell's sentencing earlier this year I didn't know that they ever did this.

    Cardinal George Pell was the third highest Catholic in the world, as he was the Vatican Treasurer. Pell was charged with acts in two seperate cases, the current one (the priest's sacristy case), and the Ballarat swimmer's case.
    The original trial for the priest's sacristy case resulted in a hung jury (at least 10 jurors voted against him, and 2 for him). Subsequently the case was retried, and it resulted in a conviction.
    At the same time however, the Ballarat swimmer's case was ongoing so there was a very widespread suppression order in place to prevent anybody from knowing that Pell had been found guilty in one trial.
    The reasons for this are very good - they were to protect Pell from unfair prejudice that may arise if the jurors in the swimmer's trial knew he was guilty of one offence, AND to ensure that the Crown would be able to prosecute the case fully, without worrying that the defence could argue that there was unfair media reporting or stuff like that. The prosecution were the ones who applied for the suppression order.

    So anyway, the suppression orders lasted for a few months until the charges in the swimmers trial were dropped, and then Pell was sentenced. HOWEVER, the day after (I think?) Pell was sentenced, various Australian newspapers had headlines that hinted that something very big had gone down, but they were forbidden to talk about it. Eg these headlines. This resulted in the Crown taking criminal proceedings against something like 36 newspapers, editors and journalists for breaching the suppression order.

    So back to Pell being sentenced. He was sentenced in Victoria's County Court by the Chief Judge and news crews were allowed in the courtroom to film it. They were ONLY allowed to focus on the Chief Judge's face however, and could not show anything else. During the sentencing hearing, Pell's barrister, Robert Richter QC copped a lot of flak for saying that the offending was "plain vanilla sexual assault".

    So now 100 days later or so, Pell is appealing based on 3 grounds (as I understand them)
    1 - It was not reasonably open to the jury, on the evidence, to convict Pell
    2 - The trial was not legally started properly because Pell was not arraigned (asked whether he plead guilty or not) in front of the jury - the jury were in a different room and it was over a video link
    3 - The Chief Judge made a mistake when he excluded a certain piece of evidence from being used (an animation showing roughly where everybody in the church was at the time of the offending)

    Pell's defence team made their submissions from 9:30am to 4:15pm yesterday, and today the prosecution made their submissions.
    The three Justices (the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the President of the Court of Appeal and a Justice of the Court of Appeal) will probably take a few weeks to write up their ruling, and then deliver it.



    Law! What is it good for? Absolutely nuthin!So as I'm sure we all know, rules are made to be broken and the laws are made to keep the sheeple under control. But to exert control over the lesser folk, you must first know the tools of your trade. I shall impart a bit of knowledge from the ancient Australian scrolls unto ye.


    1: Quick and Dirty Summary of Property Law and Native TitleIn the beginning, there was nothing! On 26th of January 1788, the First Fleet arrived in Australia and beheld a great uninhabited land that belonged to nobody, terra nullius as it was known.
    Thus the British struck a stiff upper lip, and manfully took on the burden of colonising this new land, and the Crown took acquisition of all of Australia (sovereignty).

    Except... that's not quite what it was like.
    You see, the concept of terra nullius is hotly contested as it effectively says that Australia's native inhabitants, the Aboriginals, were not actual people and did not own land. This concept of terra nullius stood for 204 years, until it was partially overturned by the legal case of Mabo v Queensland (No 2) (1992) 175 CLR 1. This case involved the Meriam people of the island of Mer, off the coast of Queensland (I think), arguing that they had owned land and passed it down through the generations since before 1788 ("Crown acquisition of sovereignty"). Thus it was argued that terra nullius did not apply to them, and that the Meriam people's property rights should be respected by the Australian courts.

    The Crown on the other hand, argued that any property rights the Meriam people MIGHT have held had been lost when the Crown acquired sovereignty over Mer.

    The High Court, in true fashion, decided to all disagree with each other and thus the 7 of them ended up with 3 seperate judgements. Basically however, the Court accepted Eddie Mabo's arguments and established a new area of law - native title. Native title says that indigenous people may retain rights to the land, and be able to exercise exclusive possession over the land if they can prove a few elements. I can't remember them all of the top of my head, but basically a native title claim group must be able to prove that they

    - Are descended from a group of Indigenous people who lived on the specific land since before the Crown acquired sovereignty of it (eg since before 1788); and
    - They have continually practiced the way of life, rituals and customs that their ancestors did
    - The rights they hold have not been lost by abandonment (leaving the land) or extinguishment (the Crown granting rights in the land to other people, eg a town hasn't been built on the land)


    2: How Aussie Law Works (awww she'll be right mate)Now, contrary to popular opinion, Australian law isn't ENTIRELY created by bouncing random ideas around, realising that its nearly midday, stamping whatever you've written down and then going to grab a stubbie with your mates.

    Basically during the period between 1788 and 1901, Australia was a collection of separate colonies that kept on changing names and shape just for the fun of it.
    In 1901 however, we decided we may as well get together and form a nation so we could have uniform laws. So we got permission from ol' Queen Victoria just before she kicked it, and we became a Federation on the 1st of January 1901! Hip hip hooray!!! There were 6 states: Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia. There were also two territories: The Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory (the ACT).

    The Northern Territory have less rights, such as only having 2 senators in the Senate rather than 12 like all the other states, because they were slow buggers and didn't get around to finishing the paperwork to become a state in time (or something along those lines). There's also technically a third territory since the ACT is the capital but its landlocked in the middle of New South Wales it was also given a bit of coast a few hundred kilometres away, the Jarvis Bay Territory.

    So we became our own country, and with that came the Australian Constitution! Its a ripper of a read! Section 51(xxxi) will have you on the edge of your seat the first time you read it. And guess what? The Constitution even gives us some entrenched rights! 5 of them in fact!!! We have the right to:

    Vote in Commonwealth elections if you can vote in State ones
    Freedom of religion, and prohibition of religious tests for Federal offices
    Trial by jury in Federal cases tried on indictment
    "Just terms" if the Commonwealth compulsory acquires your property
    Freedom from being discriminated against by other states just because you don't actually live in their state

    The High Court has even been kind enough to figure that the language of the Constitution gives us two extra rights. These are:

    The right to freedom of political communication (NOT freedom of speech) - This right arose in 1992 and was refined in 1997
    The right to vote in general


    This is a bit of a divergence, but lets go over the relationship between Australia and England.

    The federal government in Australia is called the Commonwealth, or the Crown.
    Our head of state is the monarch of England, Queen Elizabeth II. She's basically just a figure head, but could definitely stir stuff up if she wanted to.
    She is represented in Australia by the Governor-General (a thousand curses upon Kerr)
    We also have two main political parties, Labor (the left) and Liberal (the right). In comparison to America, both parties would be far left.
    The head of Australia is the Prime Minister. They are not directly voted for, and are instead whoever is the leader of the party which is in government.

    The Courts in Australia are

    The High Court of Australia
    The Supreme Court, Court of Appeal (of each state)
    The Supreme Court (of each state)
    The Country Court (of each state)
    The Magistrates Court (of each state, may also have different names in different states)

    There are also courts like the Federal Court, the Children's Court, the Family Court, the Koori Court, ect ect.


    3: How to Uncover Nefarious Loopholes By Which to Exploit the BogansSo we come to the crux of the matter. Now that you have this background, you want to know how to use the law for your own purposes to get one over the bogans, Centrelink and the politicans. Fear not for I am here.

    Now you can either do it the "official way" or the true blue Aussie way.
    The official way would be trawling through the Federal Register of Legislation and the Victorian Legislation and Parliamentary Documents websites trying to find whatever you're looking for.

    Or you could be a top bloke and just use Austlii, the greatest gift given to lawyers, even though we have no idea who actually runs it.

    So on the front page you can see a header which says

    "Australia | CTH | ACT | NSW | NT | QLD | SA | TAS | VIC | WA | New Zealand"
    Those are acronyms for the Commonwealth, Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, VICTORIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, Western Australia and some place that isn't on most maps.

    Click on CTH for example. Now you'll see a list of all the various federal courts, the years for which records are available, Commonwealth legislation, and other stuff. Click on "High Court of Australia".

    Now there's a little drop-down-box saying "Specific Year Any". Click it, and choose 1984.
    Now you can either Ctrl F and search "Chamberlain", or just click the 3rd last entry for February.
    This is the "dingo ate my baby" case. I've never actually read the case, so its probably boring as hell but there ya go.

    You'll notice at the top that the case is cited like this:
    Chamberlain v R (No 2) ("Chamberlain case") [1984] HCA 7; (1984) 153 CLR 521 (22 February 1984)

    Chamberlain is the name of the party bringing the case - because Lindy Chamberlain was appealing previous decisions.
    R is the name of the other party responding - because R stands for Regina which means Queen in Latin.
    It is (No 2) because it is the second High Court case featuring Chamberlain.
    It says ("Chamberlain case") because this is a nickname the judges decided to give it. A few cases have these, such as the "Boilermaker's case"
    [1984] HCA 7 and (1984) 153 CLR 521 are two different ways of citing it.
    I think the more legitimate citations are in round brackets. So its the 153rd volume of the Commonwealth Law Reports, starting at page 521 (the actual hardback volumes).
    Whereas HCA 7 is the 7th case the High Court did that year (it seems to actually be the 8th case though, because the Hilton Bombing Case is number 85 for whatever reason).

    In practice you'd cite it one of the two ways. Eg
    Chamberlain v R (No 2) (1984) 153 CLR 521


    So now for a quick run down of how precedent works.
    If a judge makes a decision in the County Court, the reasoning behind that decision must be followed by all judges of the Magistrates Court. This is because the Magistrates Court is a lower court.
    However, a Magistrate could get around this 4 different ways (but I've completely forgotten 2 of them). I think they are by arguing the facts of the two cases are too different for the precedent to be applicable, or by just following the precedent but making it obvious that you think its a terrible precedent and you're not happy about it.

    Other judges of the County Court would not be bound to follow that decision, nor would judges of higher courts. However, they might find it persuasive and end up following it anyway.
    So if the High Court makes a decision, everyone has to follow it (eg native title), but a later case in the High Court can change that precedent because they are not bound by themselves.



    Now onto legislation. Go back to the Austlii main page (just click the logo in the top left corner). Then click VIC and scroll down to Consolidated Acts. Click "C" and scroll down to the bottom for the "Crimes Act 1958".

    Lets look at the offence of assault. Scroll down to 31, and click it.
    This would be cited as Crimes Act 1958 (Vic) s 31.
    It basically says if you assault, or threaten to assault someone blah blah blah you're guilty of an indictable offence. The penalty is Level 6 imprisonment, with a maximum term of 5 years.

    Well now you've got a very rough idea of how the law works, what can you do with it?
    Well you can be someone in 2017, hearing in the news about how heaps of members of Parliament aren't actually allowed to be members of parliament because they're dual-citizens. Then you figure there must be something that happens to them if they aren't eligible, eg they're kicked out.
    So then you check the Constitution cos you're bored, and you find Section 46!!!
    And you see that if anybody is incapable of being a Senator, or member of the House of Reps then they are liable to pay £100 for every day they sit, to any person that bothers to sue them.
    Then you work out how much £100 is converted into AUD, or how much £100 from 1901 would be today, adjusted for inflation. And then you times that by the number of days that each member of parliament has been a politician despite not being allowed to.
    Then you do some further reading and you see that since the section says "Until the Parliament otherwise provides", the parliament are allowed to just change the actual penalty through a bog standard law, and that they've already gotten rid of this method of punishing them for being illegal members of parliament.
    And then you cry yourself to sleep




    OKKKKKKKKKK that took way too long to write. Now will anyone actually use this thread to post in, or was this a complete waste of my night? Will we get some good memes?



  2. #2
    Akar's Avatar I am not a clever man
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    Default Re: The Law and Various Other Lawyerings

    Man what a great thread dude, I love all the work you've put in here. As an (eventual) law student I will definitely be spraying my :wub:s liberally throughout the thread. I use a similar tool to what you've linked when I need to research Tennessee law. I'm not well versed on Australian law but I've been interested in the Pell case since it was brought to my attention. A question though, is Australia a common law legal system? As an American I can tell you that common law legal systems are pure bollocks to try to navigate (Though some say that's half the fun).

    All that being said I think Australia would be best served by reverting to a lawless, anarchist, prison colony where anything goes.

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    Commissar Caligula_'s Avatar The Ecstasy of Potatoes
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    Default Re: The Law and Various Other Lawyerings

    Quote Originally Posted by Akar View Post
    When you break the Geneva convention its going to make most people uncomfortable, to be fair. Not me, I'm no prude. I'm just saying...
    The thing that I like the most about the Geneva Convention and Charter of Human Rights is that they're basically checklists that you can tick off once you've abused each right. Hmmmm, it says here you're not allowed to kill prisoners of war? I guess I could fit that inbetween forming my child soldier army and napalming some villages on Saturday.


    Quote Originally Posted by Akar View Post
    Man what a great thread dude, I love all the work you've put in here. As an (eventual) law student I will definitely be spraying my :wub:s liberally throughout the thread. I use a similar tool to what you've linked when I need to research Tennessee law. I'm not well versed on Australian law but I've been interested in the Pell case since it was brought to my attention. A question though, is Australia a common law legal system? As an American I can tell you that common law legal systems are pure bollocks to try to navigate (Though some say that's half the fun).

    All that being said I think Australia would be best served by reverting to a lawless, anarchist, prison colony where anything goes.
    I can never tell whether we're common law or not. I think we are because we inherited all of the common law that was made in England since before 1986 (we passed a law getting rid of some of our legal connections with England in that year).

    So we might come up with precedent ourselves that set down firm common law rules like Kable and Boilermaker's case which set down constitutional law points (I can't remember what exactly), but other cases might either come from Australia and be decided by England's Privy Council eg Grant v Australian Knitting Mills which basically copied Donoghue v Stevenson (the snail in the bottle case) and laid down the basic principles of the law of negligence.

    But then there are also areas of law where we've had the common law for years, but the government and legal people got sick of all the individual differences in each state so every state agreed to pass a single law which overrode all the common law, and made it all just statute based. Eg the Crimes Act and the Personal Property Securities Act



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    Default Re: The Law and Various Other Lawyerings

    Great, so you guys got to build off of Britain's mess of a system and constructed an ever more convoluted warren of laws. If you thought all the individual differences between states were bad over in Australia just wait till you try to tackle America's legal system. We've got about 4-5x as many states as you guys, with each state having a supreme court and the state supreme court answering to a circuit court which answers to the supreme court. Oh and then there's the differences in Federal and State laws, which makes for situations where Marijuana is legal in half the states but federally illegal. America (and I think most countries tbh) could do with reviewing all theirs laws every few years and see whats working and what isn't; like it sounds like you said Australia did in 1986 and with the Crimes Act and Personal Property Securities Act.

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    Diamat's Avatar VELUTI SI DEUS DARETUR
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    Default Re: The Law and Various Other Lawyerings

    I thought this thread would be about actual bird law. How disappointed I was as I read on...

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    Default Re: The Law and Various Other Lawyerings

    No one here would dare to presume to know more about birb law than you, Diamat, Esq.

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    Diamat's Avatar VELUTI SI DEUS DARETUR
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    Default Re: The Law and Various Other Lawyerings

    Indeed. It would be difficult to explain bird law to non-birds, for it requires knowledge of quantum physics.

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    Akar's Avatar I am not a clever man
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    Richard Feynman once said that if you think you understand quantum physics, you don't. How do you respond to that, birb? And don't try quantum tunnel your way out of this one.

    I once read somewhere that birds are both waves and particles, is that true?

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    Diamat's Avatar VELUTI SI DEUS DARETUR
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    Quote Originally Posted by Akar View Post
    Richard Feynman once said that if you think you understand quantum physics, you don't. How do you respond to that, birb? And don't try quantum tunnel your way out of this one.

    I once read somewhere that birds are both waves and particles, is that true?
    Feynman's opinion only applies to humans. Birds are not both waves and particles - light is. Nevertheless, birds communicate on the quantum level. We are all connected to each other. No matter how far away another bird is, even if he is on the other side of the universe, we can communicate with each other instantly. It is a sort of hive mind, but we retain our individuality. Have you never wondered how birds can navigate so well? Have you never wondered how they know where they're going when they migrate? Quantum physics is the answer.

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    Technically all matter is both a particle and a wave, including photons, however most matter has a wavelength too small too be measured as a wave by all but the finest equipment. So long as you birbs are constructed of matter that follows the Standard Model then you are both wavelength and particle. That being said I do remember reading that most birbs use a form of quantum computation to get around having such small brains. This allows them to have intelligence on the level of some Total War Center posters. The birb's reliance on quantum physics will soon result in them being entangled in the net of quantum entanglement. This will be your downfall.

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    Diamat's Avatar VELUTI SI DEUS DARETUR
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    Default Re: The Law and Various Other Lawyerings

    Do not mock bird brains. They may be small, but they are compact. Do you really think a 32GB Flash Drive is worse than a CD-ROM?

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    No, but I think it's worse than a 32mb floppy. Everyone knows it goes floppy > laser disc > VHS > bluray > cd > dvd > usb > vinyl. Listen here, birdy. I have a bachelor's degree in Phrenology from Stannford (Not to be confused with Stanford or Stamford) so I feel pretty comfortable saying that birb brains are small and would be insignificant if not for their latent psychic abilities and tremendous understanding of quantum electrodynamics. Please don't try to come up with a response to this, I would hate to embarrass you in front of all your pigeon headed friends (pun intended).

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    Default Re: The Law and Various Other Lawyerings

    Talking of birds, how is it established what counts as a "dick move" in bird culture? Is there precedent, or are there elders who pore over the ancient scrolls and interpret the mystic writings?



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    No, it's much simpler than that. If a bird has objectively suffered offense, then his mind is automatically connected to the hive mind of the Avian Horde, which will then issue an objective ruling. If the offense stands, then all birds in the area will attempt to swarm the offender and peck him to death.

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    Default Re: The Law and Various Other Lawyerings

    Heres a few posting cases, and some excerpts from them.

    There is, in Auckland, a handsome German Shepherd called Ben. He belongs to the appellant. The appellant did not register his dog, contrary to s.39(i) of the Dog Control and Hydatids Act 1982. He was fined $100.00 and Court costs in the District Court at Auckland. He appeals to this Court on the ground that the sentence was manifestly excessive.



    Once upon a time, there were two little children called Dick and Dora. They had a Mummy, a Daddy and a Family Trust. The Family Trust was very fond of Dick and Dora and, in 1979, it gave each of them $1000. That is called a "distribution". Their Mummy and Daddy also loved Dick and Dora very much. That is why Mummy and Daddy lent each of them $19,000. This involved a great sacrifice, for no matter how hard Mummy and Daddy searched through the house, they couldn't find the cash, so they had to borrow it, and that is a bad thing. So, with cap in hand, Mummy and Daddy went to the Family Trust and pleaded: "Please Mr Trust, can we borrow some money for our little children?" And the Trust, which was a good-natured trust, replied: "Sure buddy, that's OK". So they borrowed the money, onlent it to their children, who lent it back to the trust and they all lived happily ever after. The End



    Thus it was that the trial began with Mr. Duncan objecting to us proceeding on the basis that I had no jurisdiction over him. Mr. Duncan provided me with an “affidavit of truth”, a rather substantial volume that appeared to me to be the result of somebody doing a Google search for terms like “jurisdiction” and the like and then cobbling them together in such a way that it makes James Joyce’s Ulysses look like an easy read. This hodgepodge of irrelevancies relied upon by Mr. Duncan was one of the misbegotten fruits of the internet. Finding it was a waste of Mr. Duncan’s time; printing it was a waste of trees and my reading it was a waste of my time and public money. With that volume as his starting point, Mr. Duncan spent some time explaining to me that I had no jurisdiction to try him, that he was not a citizen of the province or the country, that he was not a person as defined by my definitions, that there was no contract between him and me to give me status to sit in judgment over him and so on. As I have said, Mr. Duncan struck me as a perfectly pleasant young man, but on this issue he seemed a bit obtuse. I suppose that if perfectly pleasant young men weren’t led astray from time to time by drugs, alcohol, broken hearts or rubbish on the internet, then the dockets of provincial court wouldn’t be quite as plump as they usually are.



    The hills of south of Yarragon are green and shaded. The hourglass of the Latrobe Valley is there at its most slender, nestling between the grandeur of the Great Dividing Range to the north and the finely delineated Strzelecki Ranges to the south. Nine kilometres south of the Princes Highway, off Yarragon South Road, in pastoral serenity stood fifty trees. They had the ill fortune to stand on the property of the defendant - landowner, disaffected son and solicitor of this honourable Court.



    Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact--complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words--to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed.
    Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions. With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care laugh in the face of death, life on the razor's edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins.



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    Default Re: The Law and Various Other Lawyerings

    Christ, that third excerpt reminds me all of the Sovereign Citizen nutjobs we have over here in the U.S. It shouldn't surprise me that you've got them a-plenty over in Ausland but somehow here I am, surprised. Without reading anymore of that article I can confidently tell you that Mr. Duncan's argument likely revolved around him being "traveling" on the road and since hes not using it for "interstate commerce" he's not held to the laws of the road. He already did their favorite tactic which was to lambast the court with copious amounts of copy pasted unrelated legal garbage. I've spent the last half hour reading through the wiki article on sovereign citizens and their recent run ins with the law it's a fascinating tale of how stupid some Americans can actually be.

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    Commissar Caligula_'s Avatar The Ecstasy of Potatoes
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    Default Re: The Law and Various Other Lawyerings

    The 1st was New Zealand-inese?, 2nd and 4th were Australian, 3rd was Canadian and 5th was American.

    Also, I'm shadowing a pretty senior barrister and whenever we see a judge in the wild (usually when they're getting coffee outside the courts) he introduces me to them. What kinda questions should I ask them?
    I was thinking of asking them whether they miss being able to hand down the death penalty, or whether they think it should be reintroduced (the last execution in Australia was in 1967, my state abolished the death penalty in 1975 and the federal government only prohibited the reintroduction of the death penalty in any state in 2010).
    Last edited by Commissar Caligula_; June 26, 2019 at 04:30 AM.



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    Default Re: The Law and Various Other Lawyerings

    There was a case in 2008 in the state of Western Australia which involved 20 or so banks vs the liquidators of those banks. This dispute at least 11 different cases (going off the fact that this particular one is the 9th case before the WA Supreme Court, then an appeal to the WA Court of Appeal, then another appeal to the High Court). So this particular case is just one of those 11 or so. It was before a single judge for 404 sitting days from 2003 to 2006, and then the judge had to write a mammoth 2,900 page judgement (9,700 paragraphs, plus plenty of quotes, tables and other figures).

    As you might expect, the judge ends the judgement with what basically says "thank this is over, now I'm going to get retire from this bloody job, never have to get worry about this again and I'm get absolutely hammered tonight" (but in in Latin and with fancy words).

    At the end the trials had cost the banks about 300 million dollars in legal fees (their own fees, plus the other side's), plus 1.5 to 3 billion dollars in damages. Sounds pretty fun.



  19. #19
    Akar's Avatar I am not a clever man
    Patrician Citizen

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    Default Re: The Law and Various Other Lawyerings

    I imagine it's just 2900 pages of legalese telling them to right off in a beautiful combination of French, Latin, and "Australian mate".

  20. #20
    Commissar Caligula_'s Avatar The Ecstasy of Potatoes
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    Default Re: The Law and Various Other Lawyerings

    Quote Originally Posted by Commissar Caligula_ View Post
    Well now you've got a very rough idea of how the law works, what can you do with it?
    Well you can be someone in 2017, hearing in the news about how heaps of members of Parliament aren't actually allowed to be members of parliament because they're dual-citizens. Then you figure there must be something that happens to them if they aren't eligible, eg they're kicked out.
    So then you check the Constitution cos you're bored, and you find Section 46!!!
    And you see that if anybody is incapable of being a Senator, or member of the House of Reps then they are liable to pay £100 for every day they sit, to any person that bothers to sue them.
    Then you work out how much £100 is converted into AUD, or how much £100 from 1901 would be today, adjusted for inflation. And then you times that by the number of days that each member of parliament has been a politician despite not being allowed to.
    Then you do some further reading and you see that since the section says "Until the Parliament otherwise provides", the parliament are allowed to just change the actual penalty through a bog standard law, and that they've already gotten rid of this method of punishing them for being illegal members of parliament.
    And then you cry yourself to sleep
    I was half way there!!! A combination of s46 of the Constitution and s3 of the Common Informers (Parliamentary Disqualifications) Act 1975 let you sue them parliamentarians!!!
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-...-6000/11313442



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