Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Juvenile or adult? Leap-year suspect poses conundrum for court

abc.net.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 62 posts

Re: Juvenile or adult? Leap-year suspect poses conundrum for court

#21

Post by pricechild »

jacquesm wrote: post #13
jen729w wrote: post #6

I'm a marriage celebrant here in Australia and a couple must, by law, give "one month" notice before they wish to be married. This is surprisingly complicated. A good percentage of the training and the accreditation were related to the calculation of this month. The Attorney General's Department sent out a fact-sheet earlier this year, clarifying "one month" and giving a bunch of examples. A few months later they upd…

A typical case of making something more complex than needed. They could have simply used a window of time specified as no less than 30 days and no more than 45 days. That would have solved the problem in an elegant and robust way.

What about in the case of daylight savings? Do you need to add an extra hour?

Re: Juvenile or adult? Leap-year suspect poses conundrum for court

#22

Post by lostlogin »

jacquesm wrote: post #13
jen729w wrote: post #6

I'm a marriage celebrant here in Australia and a couple must, by law, give "one month" notice before they wish to be married. This is surprisingly complicated. A good percentage of the training and the accreditation were related to the calculation of this month. The Attorney General's Department sent out a fact-sheet earlier this year, clarifying "one month" and giving a bunch of examples. A few months later they upd…

A typical case of making something more complex than needed. They could have simply used a window of time specified as no less than 30 days and no more than 45 days. That would have solved the problem in an elegant and robust way.

Or simpler, just get rid of whatever moralising has lead to that law and just accept that some people want to get married now.

Re: Juvenile or adult? Leap-year suspect poses conundrum for court

#23

Post by amanzi »

jacquesm wrote: post #13
jen729w wrote: post #6

I'm a marriage celebrant here in Australia and a couple must, by law, give "one month" notice before they wish to be married. This is surprisingly complicated. A good percentage of the training and the accreditation were related to the calculation of this month. The Attorney General's Department sent out a fact-sheet earlier this year, clarifying "one month" and giving a bunch of examples. A few months later they upd…

A typical case of making something more complex than needed. They could have simply used a window of time specified as no less than 30 days and no more than 45 days. That would have solved the problem in an elegant and robust way.

The term "month" will be used in lots of legislations and other official documents. That wording above is a general definition that applies to any Acts containing the term "month" and not just for the marriage notification.

Re: Juvenile or adult? Leap-year suspect poses conundrum for court

#24

Post by dragonwriter »

lathiat wrote: post #8
jen729w wrote: post #6

I'm a marriage celebrant here in Australia and a couple must, by law, give "one month" notice before they wish to be married. This is surprisingly complicated. A good percentage of the training and the accreditation were related to the calculation of this month. The Attorney General's Department sent out a fact-sheet earlier this year, clarifying "one month" and giving a bunch of examples. A few months later they upd…

Fascinating that they don't use the same "immediately before" language under (ii) - that seems to provide clarity that it's at the end of the day not the start of the day but no such clarify exists for (ii) though could probably be assumed.

(ii) explicitly states at the end of the month, which unambiguously specifies that the period ends when the month does. (i) uses “immediately before” language because it is referencing the numerically corresponding day of the next calendar month after the start day. In both cases they seem to be taking the simplest unambiguous description.

Re: Juvenile or adult? Leap-year suspect poses conundrum for court

#25

Post by noobermin »

This really goes against what the spirit of these sorts of laws should be.

The 18 barrier to age of majority is treated as a threshold, sure, but the reality of people is they mature in different ways and over longer periods of time. I (and my culture I guess) considered myself an adult by 16 or 17 whilst friends I know didn't consider themselves adults until 22 or 23. The thing I know is under the law, everyone needs to be held to the same standard, but does a day an adult make? Is that seriously the argument they make there?

Biologically and psychologically, we know that a day doesn't age someone, maturation occurs on a longer timescale. The thing is 18 as a threshold is not as important as how responsible, aware, and independent a person is. I know that's a harder thing to measure, but when we confuse the map for the territory, instead of actually using the law as intended, we play these weird legal games.

Re: Juvenile or adult? Leap-year suspect poses conundrum for court

#26

Post by adynatos »

jen729w wrote: post #6

I'm a marriage celebrant here in Australia and a couple must, by law, give "one month" notice before they wish to be married. This is surprisingly complicated. A good percentage of the training and the accreditation were related to the calculation of this month. The Attorney General's Department sent out a fact-sheet earlier this year, clarifying "one month" and giving a bunch of examples. A few months later they upd…

tell me there's an "acts interpretation act" interpretation. or even "acts interpretation act" interpretation act.

Re: Juvenile or adult? Leap-year suspect poses conundrum for court

#27

Post by jacquesm »

lostlogin wrote: post #22
jacquesm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A typical case of making something more complex than needed. They could have simply used a window of time specified as no less than 30 days and no more than 45 days. That would have solved the problem in an elegant and robust way.

Or simpler, just get rid of whatever moralising has lead to that law and just accept that some people want to get married now.

The reason is not a moralizing one, it came into being when the registries were less than perfect to avoid bigamy. It probably could be abandoned in the present day without any loss of functionality but it definitely was not codified into law for moralizing reasons.

Re: Juvenile or adult? Leap-year suspect poses conundrum for court

#28

Post by thomasfoster96 »

jen729w wrote: post #6

I'm a marriage celebrant here in Australia and a couple must, by law, give "one month" notice before they wish to be married. This is surprisingly complicated. A good percentage of the training and the accreditation were related to the calculation of this month. The Attorney General's Department sent out a fact-sheet earlier this year, clarifying "one month" and giving a bunch of examples. A few months later they upd…

IANAL, but given this case is in an ACT court the ACT’s Legislation Act 2001 [0] (perhaps better named than ‘Acts Interpretation Act 1901’) is probably the more relevant piece of legislation in this case, and defines a ‘month’ like this:

  "month" means a period beginning at the start of any day of one of the calendar months and ending—

  (a) immediately before the start of the corresponding day of the next calendar month; or

  (b) if there is no such corresponding day—at the end of the next calendar month.

  Examples

  1 The period beginning at the start of 8 May 2014 and ending at midnight on 7 June 2014 is a month.

  2 The period beginning at the start of 30 January 2014 and ending at midnight on 28 February 2014 is a month. The month ends on the last day of February because in that year, February does not have a day corresponding to 29 January (because 2014 is not a leap year). If the period began at the start of 30 January 2016 (ie a leap year), the month would end at midnight on 29 February 2016.

  Note: An example is part of the Act, is not exhaustive and may extend, but does not limit, the meaning of the provision in which it appears (see Legislation Act, s 126 and s 132).
Example 2 is extremely relevant.

[0] http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/act/conso...

Re: Juvenile or adult? Leap-year suspect poses conundrum for court

#29

Post by kawakiole »

lostlogin wrote: post #22
jacquesm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A typical case of making something more complex than needed. They could have simply used a window of time specified as no less than 30 days and no more than 45 days. That would have solved the problem in an elegant and robust way.

Or simpler, just get rid of whatever moralising has lead to that law and just accept that some people want to get married now.

It need not be moralising at all. In many countries for pretty much every "life changing" contract such as marriage, buying a house, changing the will, etc. there's a cool down period that tries to prevent being rushed to do such things.

Also here in (some cantons of) Switzerland, during the month of notice you have to give to get married, the names of the couple is published so that people can protest the marriage if they know it's not a legal one, which is for sure something some people can find odious but it's not done for moralising but for practical purposes.

Re: Juvenile or adult? Leap-year suspect poses conundrum for court

#30

Post by danieltillett »

jen729w wrote: post #6

I'm a marriage celebrant here in Australia and a couple must, by law, give "one month" notice before they wish to be married. This is surprisingly complicated. A good percentage of the training and the accreditation were related to the calculation of this month. The Attorney General's Department sent out a fact-sheet earlier this year, clarifying "one month" and giving a bunch of examples. A few months later they upd…

I thought it was a month and a day notice you had to give.
Post reply on HN