Monday, February 20, 2006

Overcoming the void

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As everyone knows, the law of Scotland has its origins in Roman-Dutch law. Its technical language can look a little strange to English juris...
Friday, February 17, 2006

The "overarching requirement" of fairness

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The interrelationship between the requirements that statements be made voluntarily, and that trials be fair, was central to the unanimous de...
Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Easy does it!

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The Supreme Court’s decision in Thompson v R [2006] SCNZ 3 (15 February 2006), in which answers to questions at trial were held not to have...
Thursday, February 09, 2006

Rushing to judgment

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Cutting to the chase in trials can look unfair. Where legal submissions are necessary, judges may be tempted to deal with them peremptorily,...
Friday, January 27, 2006

Fingered!

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What makes fingerprint evidence interesting is the increasing unlikelihood that we all have different fingerprints. This, at least, is what ...
Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Index to these blog entries

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To access my Index to all the entries on this blogsite, up to the end of the last month, click on the link on the right.

Recklessness

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What does "reckless" mean? Where a person can be guilty of a crime if he has acted with a state of mind called "recklessness...
Monday, January 23, 2006

Illegal acquittals

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Objections to the power proposed to be given to the prosecution, in some circumstances, to appeal against acquittals, are usually advanced o...
Friday, January 20, 2006

Three major themes

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Three topics of general interest were touched upon by the Privy Council in Grant v R (Jamaica) [2006] UKPC 2 (17 January 2006): (1) the int...
Monday, January 16, 2006

Revising history

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Where a trial has, in the opinion of an appellate court, involved a miscarriage of justice, the appeal against conviction should be allowed,...
Thursday, December 22, 2005

The more, the merrier

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How straight-laced are Quebeckers? One would have thought this was a silly-season question. And yes, the people of Quebec are called Quebeck...
Monday, December 19, 2005

The evil that men think

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If I am offended, not by what I see a person doing, but by what I think he might do later, have I observed behaviour that the criminal law c...
Friday, December 16, 2005

Proof or believability

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One of the difficult distinctions in the law of evidence concerns the use of statements made by a witness on a previous occasion to contradi...
Monday, December 12, 2005

The "rule" in Browne v Dunn

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Can the rules of evidence, that have been designed to ensure fairness, be ignored if the judge feels that it would be more fair to ignore th...
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Friday, December 09, 2005

How civilised are we?

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What use of torture is tolerable? More precisely, what risk that evidence tendered to the court was obtained by torture is tolerable? The Ho...
Monday, December 05, 2005

Synchronicity

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The House of Lords and the New Zealand Supreme Court decided similar cases on 1 December 2005. Each concerned the rights of persons who had ...
Thursday, November 24, 2005

Bain, again

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Supporters of David Bain will, no doubt, be studying Mallard v R [2005] HCA 68 (15 November 2005). Both started as petitions for the exerci...
Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Death and certainty

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How much formalism is too much? In interpreting statutes, to resolve an ambiguity, judges may focus on the context of the problematic phrase...