Law reports from today’s Irish Times:

Photos of sex offender may not be published
Callaghan v Independent News and Media Ltd: Northern Ireland High Court, Judgment was given by Mr Justice Stephens on January 7th, 2009 [2009] NIQB 1

An unpixelated photograph of sex murderer Kenneth Callaghan, from which he could be identified, cannot be published. Mr Callaghan has served 21 years of a life sentence and is due for supervised release, and Mr Justice Stephens ruled that the publication of such a photograph, by disrupting his supervision and support regime, would increase the risk to the public by increasing his risk of re-offending. He granted a separate order that no photograph of any prisoner in the Prisoner Assessment Unit of the Northern Ireland Prison Service could be published without 48 hours’ notice. Read the rest of this entry »

Two Australian stories recently caught my eye; and, although at first blush the only link is Australia, there is in fact a deeper connection. The first is from the BBC news Website:

Writer jailed for Thai ‘insult’

Australian writer Harry Nicolaides has been sentenced to three years in a Thai jail for insulting the monarchy. Nicolaides wrote a novel four years ago, which contained a brief passage referring to an unnamed crown prince. It sold just seven copies.

He admitted the charge of insulting the royal family, but said he was unaware he was committing an offence. Thailand’s monarchy is sheltered from public debate by some of the world’s most stringent “lèse-majesté” laws.

Read the rest of this entry »

Three articles in today’s Observer demonstrate three recurrent internet tropes.

Update: The first relates to Goodwin’s Law; the second concerns the long-term fragility of digital storage of date; and the third relates to the religious wars between mac and pc. Read the rest of this entry »

Legal Eagle, on Skeptic Lawyer, tells us that a goat is being held on suspicion of committing an armed robbery in Nigeria.

Rather than being a page from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, this is actually not quite as bizarre as it seems on first blush. A bear in Macedonia, which repeatedly raided a beekeeper’s hives, was found guilty last year of theft and criminal damage; and the wonderful movie The Hour of the Pig (imdb) reflects the common practice in the middle ages of putting animals on trial. I have already discussed some of the legal issues in my post Isn’t it funny, how a bear likes honey? I can feel a movie coming on about 419 scammers getting their goat!

In the meantime, Legal Eagle – who has been here before – asks about the current defendant:

I wonder what rights the goat has. Does it have the right to legal representation? To be treated equally before the law?

If these rights are provided to human defendants in the Nigerian courts, and if the law is anthropomorphically prepared to put a goat on trial, then of course Nigerian law should afford these rights to the goat as well. In the end, all goats are equal, aren’t they?

Further to my recent post on Restitution in the news!, two pieces in today’s Irish Times caught my eye:

Breifne O’Brien faces new claims for €997,000

TWO MORE claims have been brought to court against Breifne O’Brien, operator of an investment scheme, for the repayment of money given to him. The latest claims, totalling almost €1 million, will increase to more than €14 million the sums sought from the businessman. Mr Justice Peter Kelly was told yesterday by Alan Doherty, for several claimants, that two other creditors of Mr O’Brien have issued proceedings. This followed the judge’s indication last week that anyone else with claims should move speedily.

Kelly J was busy yesterday, as the other story demonstrates:

Two Irish-listed firms in court bid to recover €1bn

WO IRISH-LISTED investment companies, which gave sums of more than $1.1 billion (€847 million) and €170 million destined for alleged $50 billion fraudster Bernard Madoff and his company to invest in the Irish arm of banking giant HSBC to administer, have initiated Commercial Court proceedings in a bid to get the money back. The holding funds in which the money is held have been frozen. … Mr Justice Peter Kelly … said he believed this was the first litigation here deriving from the “infamous” Madoff bankruptcy and he listed for hearing on Tuesday next applications by the companies to prevent their money being dissipated or removed outside the Irish jurisdiction without leave of the court.

Although there is quite a bit of Irish law on this issue, it could do with clarification. And if either or both of these claims proceeds to full trial, that clarification would be welcome not only by the students in my Restitution course, but also by those practitioners who will have to advise clients as the current economic slowdown (are we allowed to call it a recession, or even a depression, yet?) deepens and there are more claims for the restitution of money transferred to collapsed financial institutions.

Update (25 January 2009): Legal Eagle has an excellent post on the legal issues raised by the Madoff affair: Investment scheme collapses give rise to equitable and restitutionary claims. She concludes:

Well, we’ll just have to watch this space and see what happens with the various legal claims. Yet again, I suspect the only people who will emerge happily from this will be the lawyers (no wonder nobody loves us).

I couldn’t agree more!

Update (26 January 2009): various Madoff pieces in Times Online here, here, and here; and, as a bonus, from the same source, news of a UK ponzi scheme.

Update (28 January 2009): From today’s Irish Times: Assets-freezing order on alleged fraudster increased; HSBC tells of Madoff link to disputed €1.2bn; from today’s Times Online: Santander offers €1.38 bn to compensate clients hit by Madoff.

Update (29 January 2009): A fascinating and comprehensive piece from The Independent: The Madoff files: Bernie’s billions. It begins:

How did Bernhard Madoff set about building the most audacious fraud in history? Did no one suspect that his investments were too good to be true? And how could his sons and brother, who helped run the family business, know nothing of the deception? As the full story emerges, Stephen Foley pieces together the $50bn puzzle

This is the last of the updates to this post. It was too good to omit. However, in the future (for the sake of my sanity) I’ll be referring only to developments sufficiently major to get their own posts; and, of course, any full judgments will be analysed on this blog as they arise.

There are three really interesting things on in Trinity at the moment.

First, the 1930s Cleudo-style poster on the left is for a fascinating exhibition in the Old Library (the building that houses the Long Room and the Book of Kells) about crime writing in the 1920s and the 1930s. Showcasing the first golden age of the detective novel, the exhibition illustrates the origins of the detective story in the mid 19th century, and focuses on the growth in popularity of fictional heroes such as Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown and Hercule Poirot in the earlier part of the 20th century. [Update: more here]. One thing is sure: since academics have become overworked administrators, the body in the library is not one of my academic colleagues!

Second, hot on the heels of winning an Irish Times Living Dublin Award, the Science Gallery is holding a festival and exhibition called LIGHTWAVE. Defy the Darkness. The festival features talks, workshops, performances and a very civilized LightClub conversation space, and the interactive exhibition will continue for another month.

‘Sé an tríú rud atá ar siúl sa choláiste ná Égise na Trinóide 09. Chuir An Chumann Ghaelach agus Oifig na Gaeilge an féile bhliantúil Ghaeilge an Choláiste le chéile, agus beidh go leor le deanamh an seachtain seo chugainn [Leagan úr: féach anseo chomh mhaith]. Beidh ceol agus craic, dispóireachtaí agus agallaimh ar siúl; bígí ann!

The British Humanist Association (BHA) ran an entertaining advertising campaign on London buses last year, and it has just announced that it will run the campaign nationwide. The campaign is built around the slogan:

However, religious groups – including Christian Voice – complained to the Advertising Standards Authority, arguing that the bus campaign broke the advertising code on the grounds of substantiation and truthfulness. The Guardian (hat tip: Media Law Prof Blog) picks up the story:

ASA clears Atheist Bus Campaign ads

… The advertising watchdog has ruled that a controversial atheist ad campaign, which sparked the ire of Christian groups for proclaiming “There is probably no God”, did not break its code …

See also: AFP | BBC | Index on Censorship | Telegraph | TimesOnline. From the ASA statement:

Atheist bus ad campaign is not in breach of the Advertising Code

… The ASA Council concluded that the ad was an expression of the advertiser’s opinion and that the claims in it were not capable of objective substantiation. Although the ASA acknowledges that the content of the ad would be at odds with the beliefs of many, it concluded that it was unlikely to mislead or to cause serious or widespread offence.

The Christian Voice response is here. The best response I have found is on Nick Spencer’s Theos blog on the Telegraph website, returning to a fray he had joined when the advertisements were first posted on London buses.

Back on the (atheist) buses

[The ASA's decision] is terribly long-sighted and rather disappointing. Who would not have relished the sight of the ASA adjudicating on whether or not God probably exists? It could have been the Scopes Trial of the 21st century, calling the world’s leading philosophers, theologians, historians, artists, anthropologists, physicists, biologists, and psychologists to testify, not to mention the legion of ordinary men and women who claim to have had a spiritual experience or two.

The ASA offices in High Holborn would have turned into a media circus, as thousands of correspondents from every country on God’s (”Discuss.”) earth arrived to witness the judgment of this panel of sages. At last the issue would have been decided, probably.

From yesterday’s Irish Times:

Rwanda jails ex-minister over genocide

KIGALI – A Rwandan court jailed former justice minister Agnes Ntamabyariro for life yesterday after finding her guilty of incitement during the 1994 genocide.

Ntamabyariro is the first senior former government official to be tried by the authorities in Kigali over the killing of 800,000 minority ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.

“She has been individually implicated in those crimes,” Augustine Nkusi, Rwanda’s national prosecutor, told reporters. – (Reuters)

She is to appeal. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda had convicted directors of the Rwandan radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) of incitement to commit genocide (Case No ICTR-99-52-T The Prosecutor v Ferdinand Nahimana, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, and Hassan Ngeze; excellent background summary here), but this is the first such case in the Rwandan courts.

From today’s Irish Times:

Dutch MP faces prosecution for anti-Islam film

AMSTERDAM – Right-wing Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who has made a short film accusing the Koran of inciting violence, must be prosecuted for anti-Islam comments, an Amsterdam court said yesterday.

The court overruled the public prosecutor, who had argued that Mr Wilders, whose film Fitna urged Muslims to tear out “hate-filled” verses from the Koran, was protected by the right to free speech. (Reuters)

These cases turn on incitement, but the word itself is entirely neutral. Incitement to do good things would be entirely unobjectionable. It is when bad things are incited that legal issues arise. Given that incitement is an infringement upon freedom of expression, three principles apply.

First, the bad things must actually be bad: genocide plainly meets this standard; there is room for debate in contexts such as blasphemy and anorexia; and many spurious grounds lie at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Second, where the impugned speech has not yet resulted in the bad thing, then the bad thing must have a high degree of likelihood of actually occurring. From the reports about Geert Wilders, although violence is plainly a bad thing, there does not seem to be a sufficiently high degree of likelihood that his film would incite it (update, and for that reason alone, ‘Wilders must be supported’).

Third, where the bad thing has already occurred, the impugned speech must have caused that bad thing. The point of the Ntamabyariro and Nahimana cases is that there was a sufficient causal link between the incitement and the genocide.