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Side titles: one that got away
In the book I say some possibly heretical things about what name you should give to a case that your judge is citing. But I also say that, generally speaking, when you see a side title (ie, a case name that runs down the outside margin of the pages in a law report) you can Continue reading
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Apropos of absolutely nothing
Whenever I see a word in a judgment which I think I know the meaning of, but which is not all that common a word, I look it up in the online Oxford English Dictionary, just to be sure. This is not a bad habit to get into, because you never know when what you Continue reading
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The common form criminal appeal provision, aka my brain hurts
The High Court is regularly asked to hear cases that engage, to some degree, with what is known as the common form criminal appeal provision, and/or the “proviso” to that provision. This probably comes as no great surprise to those who are active in the field. The provision itself has a lot of moving parts, Continue reading
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Privy Council appeals from the High Court of Australia: not just a nostalgic reverie
There was a time, long ago, when lawyers could occasionally convince their clients to fly them to London in order to have an appeal in their case heard by the members of the Privy Council. (Did they fly first class? It would be tawdry to speculate.) Those were indeed the days. Like all good things, Continue reading
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Case number or opening page number?
If you have looked at an English law report in recent years, and in particular one of the many reports published by Sweet & Maxwell, you may have noticed that some of them have taken to giving each reported case its own case number. The Criminal Appeal Reports is a good example; it is a Continue reading
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What is this sh*t?
I recently had occasion to consider the difference between “sewerage” and “sewage”. I had never consciously turned my mind to this before. I had been inclined to think that, like “flammable” and “inflammable”, they were two ways of referring to the same thing. Or that they were variant spellings; maybe, for example, one was American Continue reading
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A reader writes …
“I have encountered your nemesis!” The reader attached the following photograph: This is, indeed, the street sign I refer to in the book as a particularly disturbing example of ambiguity. Look, to be honest it’s not even ambiguous. It’s actually meaningless. What are these “other times”? When does the 15-minute restriction not apply? Is there Continue reading
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We were wrong …
… Or were we? In what was, for me, a new – and, one hopes, not often to be repeated – experience, I was recently called out, in public, as having made a mistake in my book. I had been invited “upstairs” for what turned out to be an occasion to mark the dubious achievement Continue reading
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Second reading speeches: their part in my downfall
Second reading speeches are the things where the relevant Minister stands up in Parliament and extols the virtues of some proposed piece of legislation before putting it to the House for a vote. Courts can refer to these to ascertain the intention of Parliament when faced with legislation that is – perish the thought – Continue reading
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Chapter titles: the mystery revealed
A lot of people have asked me* for an explanation of the chapter titles in the book. It is time to reveal all. 1. “Hi, How Are You?” is the name of an album by American “outsider” musician Daniel Johnston. I may have inferred the question mark. 2. “Manifesto” is a Roxy Music album. 3. Continue reading
What is the 'it'? 