Law – Page 6 – cearta.ie

US Supreme Court The BBC are reporting today on yet another death row battle in the United States: Alabama’s fierce death row battle:

If most politicians in Alabama had their way, Tommy Arthur would have been executed more than 20 years ago. … Alabama’s governor has made it clear he wants Arthur to die as soon as possible, and that the current furore over the chemicals used to deliver the ultimate punishment is an annoying distraction.

Although many death penalty abolitionists are viewing the US Supreme Court’s decision to review the constitutionality of the existing chemical cocktail with hope, the fact is that states like Alabama guard their rights very carefully – and few more so than the right to execution.

Last Thursday, I attended an event hosted by the University of Washington and Lee‘s branch of the American Constitution Society, looking at the US Supreme Court’s term just past and at the term to come. David Bruck, of that University’s Law School talked about death penalty cases (which he described as a US Supreme Court “staple, term after term”), including what the BBC story above referred to as “the current furore over the chemicals used to deliver the ultimate punishment”.…

Wigs and Gowns on Judges and Barristers – Silly Anachronism or Necessary Solemnity?

25 July, 200723 October, 2011

| 6 Comments

| Court dress, judges, Law

A few weeks ago, Pupilblogger wrote, of the barrister’s wig and gown:

I wore a wig and my gown in combat for the first time today. And the bloody tunic shirt with detachable collars, the wing collar and the bands.

Did I look and feel silly? You bet. I looked no sillier than any other barristers in court, of course, but they are at least used to it by now. …

Next year’s pupilbloggers won’t have to look quite so silly any more. I learn (via ContractsProf Blog and Concurring Opinions) that in England and Wales, the wearing of wigs, wing collars and bands by judges and advocates in civil and family courts, but not in criminal courts, is to be abolished from 1 January 2008, and that judicial gowns are to be radically simplified from the same date. Following a public consultation paper on court working dress, prepared in 2003 (html | pdf) but only released in June of this year, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers (BBC | wikipedia) took the decision to make life easier for pupilbloggers everywhere. He explained (from the press release):

At present High Court judges have no less than five different sets of working dress, depending on the jurisdiction in which they are sitting and the season of the year.

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The new physics of lawyering

3 July, 200726 July, 2007

| 3 Comments

| Law

Via Susan Crawford, I have learned about OneWebDay (to find out more, click on the link and the image at the left).

And today, her post on The new legal physics is quite simply superb; her closing paragraph is more full of insight than anything else I have read this year:

Nothing ever goes away. Law firms aren’t going to disappear in my lifetime. But it does seem to me that lawyers will have to evolve to deal with a system that is vastly different from what was in place just twenty years ago. Everyone has access to all the information, so lawyers can’t charge for looking things up. They can only stay “off the treadmill” if they let go of the idea that they have some omniscient brooding right to charge for the kinds of tasks they used to do. Like newspapers, movie studios, telephone companies, and post offices, lawyers will have to adapt to the new physics of the internet.

Read the rest of her post.…

I like Slaw

23 June, 200723 June, 2007

| 2 Comments

| Law

The title refers not to a salad of shredded brassica (though I like that too), but rather to slaw, which is one of my daily must-reads. It describes itself as a “co-operative weblog about Canadian legal research and IT, etc” (I especially like the “etc”), and it is a frequent source of many things I save to del.icio.us. But two recent posts are just crying out to be shared even more widely than that.

In the first post, Kim Nayer referred to two presentations at the SLA Legal Division 2007 Conference, one by Nathan Rosen on legal wikis, the other by Thomas Fleming on Legal Research for the Google Generation (warning: they’re both powerpoints, but well worth the effort). The other post, by Agnese Caruso, brought “What’s new on the legal web” to my attention (American focussed, but very useful).

Thanks to Kim and Agnese, and especially to slaw!

PS. As is always the way, ten minutes after I had published this post, it occurred to me that it really should have been called Slaw is del.icio.us!

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Why educate law students?

12 June, 20075 April, 2008

| 3 Comments

| Law, Legal Education, Universities

This post title is the potential cue for every bad lawyer joke you’ve ever told, or for every bad lawyer cartoon you’ve ever seen; don’t worry, I’ve heard or seen them all – it’s an occupational hazard. But following on from my last post about the current state of education inspired by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES), I couldn’t let pass without comment a story on the website of Chronicle of Higher Education (the US equivalent of the THES). The piece is here (sub req’d) and here (= hat tip: Mirror of Justice). From the Chronicle piece:

The Corrosive Effects of Law School

Chronicle of Higher Education Online
June 8, 2007

A glance at the current issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin: The maddening effects of law school

Research suggests that law school has a corrosive effect on the well-being, values, and motivation of students, say Kennon M. Sheldon, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Missouri at Columbia, and Lawrence S. Krieger, a law professor at Florida State University. “Indeed, the emotional distress of law students appears to significantly exceed that of medical students and at times approach that of psychiatric populations,” they write.

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Blogging Bar

16 April, 200727 April, 2007

| No Comments

| Blogging, Law

The Bar Council of England and Wales has a new website, and – mirabile dictu – a blog!!

Hat tips (& commentary): Tim Kevan on The Barrister Blog | Nick Holmes on Binary Law | Geeklawyer | lo-fi librarian | and, of course, Charon QC.

When, if at all, will their Irish counterparts do something similar?…

The status of frozen embryos under the ECHR

12 April, 200716 April, 2007

| No Comments

| Irish Law, Irish Society, Law

What should be the legal response to a situation where a couple, having frozen the woman’s embryos (say, for medical reasons) subsequently break up? If neither statute nor the arrangement between the couple and the clinic provides for this, then it would seem that the woman has no right to seek to implant the embryos in the hope of bearing a child or children without the consent of her now ex-partner. This at least was the view of the Irish High Court in MR v TR [2006] IEHC 359 (15 November 2006) interpreting the Irish Constitution last year (already noted on this blog); and it was the view this week of the European Court of Human Rights in Evans v UK [GC] 6339/05 [2007] ECHR 264 (10 April 2007) …