Friday, January 31, 2014

Erroneous concessions

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It would be manifestly unfair for a defendant to be held to a concession that was made because of a mistake of law: R v Mackle (Northern I...
Monday, January 20, 2014

Stop the discussion!

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The dissent in R v MacDonald , 2014 SCC 3  (17 January 2014) is so cogently reasoned that one wonders why the majority didn’t refer to it or...
Monday, December 23, 2013

When your thought becomes my experience

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Another aspect of B(SC12/2013) v R [ 2013] NZSC 151 (19 December 2013) is its varieties of judicial interpretation of ss 40(3)(b) and 4...
Friday, December 20, 2013

Perverse acquittals and the limits of the law

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Whether you are a stranded speluncean explorer or a shipwrecked sailor adrift and starving, the law applies to you. Even where you enter in...
Thursday, December 19, 2013

Control: peaceable possession of land

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Pronouns and political correctness: "his", or "his or her"? Section 56(1) of the Crimes Act 1961 [NZ] has been politi...
Tuesday, December 10, 2013

When is a judicial development too late?

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A simply-defined statutory offence may require detailed judicial development. Pending such development and final determination by the highe...
Saturday, December 07, 2013

Common law fairness and the Evidence Act 2006[NZ]

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To what extent does the Evidence Act 2006 [NZ] exclude the common law discretion to rule inadmissible evidence that was obtained, not thro...
Thursday, November 28, 2013

Culpable recklessness and innocent negligence: inferences from conduct

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How does a court decide what a defendant foresaw about the consequences of his acts? The difference between foreseeing and not foreseeing...
Monday, November 18, 2013

Looking into oral argument about causation

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Oral argument on appeals is quite an interesting thing, as you can hear and read in relation to Burrage v United States (Docket No 12-751...
Sunday, November 17, 2013

A diligent and simple people

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Two recent cases from the Supreme Court of Canada: Diligence and freshness In R v Hay , 2013 SCC 61 (8 November 2013) on the issue of ...
Friday, November 15, 2013

Perverse acquittals

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A conviction can only be "according to law", but an acquittal need not be. We don't often mention the jury's power to r...
Friday, November 01, 2013

For the notebook ...

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One never knows when the following recent decisions of the High Court of Australia and of the Supreme Court of Canada may be useful: Judges ...
Friday, October 18, 2013

Oyez!

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Of peripheral interest to criminal lawyers are a couple of recent decisions of the United Kingdom Supreme Court. Prisoners and voting rig...
Thursday, October 10, 2013

Unnecessarily attacking the fundamentals

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Even the most robust of the fundamentals of the criminal law can be modified by statute. When that happens, the fundamental should retain it...