61–70 of 186 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One should think that this would enable anyone accused of a crime to argue "Your Honour, I could not know that my act was illegal as the law in question is unaccessible to me."
Ignorance of the law is, famously, not a legal defence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> * Anything improper that the government's attorneys do would be an abuse of power* If the government lawyers said "he is behaving like a terorrist" or "this is terrorism," I'd agree with you. But we don't know that. We just have government lawyers describing something, within unknown context, as a "strategy of terrorism" and a headline running that into an accusation.
I'm challenging the use of the phrase "faux pas" to describe actions of government representatives that could harm private entities. Whether and how it happened is irrelevant.
It's a fair challenge. My response isn't that you're wrong, just that the article provides insufficient evidence for me to agree with you. Describing a legal action as a "strategy of terrorism" is, to me, a faux pas. Describing a person's activities as a "strategy of terrorism" is abusive if employed to dissuade them from continuing a legal battle and possibly defamatory.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure on which law this whole fad is based on. Is it an old law? > [...] The last time the Supreme Court addressed the matter, in 1888, it ruled that “the whole work done by the judges constitutes the authentic exposition and interpretation of the law, which, binding every citizen, is free for publication to all.” A solution to how ridiculous old laws are is automatically expire them. That way, the politicians…
> A solution to how ridiculous old laws are is automatically expire them This sort of legal amnesia has major drawbacks. Hand politicians the opportunity to make crisis and they'll take advantage of it. Do we really want debt-limit style brinksmanship around murder statutes? Moreover, cleanly sunsetting laws within our common law system is hard. Case law builds on statute. Regularly wiping away vast portions of case…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm challenging the use of the phrase "faux pas" to describe actions of government representatives that could harm private entities. Whether and how it happened is irrelevant.
> I'm challenging the use of the phrase "faux pas" to describe actions of government representatives that could harm private entities It's a fair challenge. My response isn't that you're wrong, just that the article provides insufficient evidence for me to agree with you. Describing a legal action as a "strategy of terrorism" is, to me, a faux pas . Describing a person's activities as a "strategy of terrorism" is abu…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure on which law this whole fad is based on. Is it an old law? > [...] The last time the Supreme Court addressed the matter, in 1888, it ruled that “the whole work done by the judges constitutes the authentic exposition and interpretation of the law, which, binding every citizen, is free for publication to all.” A solution to how ridiculous old laws are is automatically expire them. That way, the politicians…
> A solution to how ridiculous old laws are is automatically expire them This sort of legal amnesia has major drawbacks. Hand politicians the opportunity to make crisis and they'll take advantage of it. Do we really want debt-limit style brinksmanship around murder statutes? Moreover, cleanly sunsetting laws within our common law system is hard. Case law builds on statute. Regularly wiping away vast portions of case…
Yes. Presumably politicians don't want to be murdered by their opposition. It wouldn't lapse more than once.
The plaintiff is listed as "Georgia code revision commission", and it's surprisingly hard to find out who that actually consists of - googling it just finds more reports of this case. I note that Georgia is currently an "R" state.
From the federal court opinion [1]:
"The annotations were initially prepared by Mathew Bender & Co., Inc., an operating division of the LexisNexis Group, (Lexis), pursuant to an agreement it entered into with the State of Georgia. Under the terms of the agreement, Lexis is responsible for the ongoing publication and maintenance of the Code, and all editorial, publication, and distribution costs. In exchange, Lexis was given the exclusive right of publication by Georgia. But, notably, Georgia holds the copyright in the annotations in its own name. The publication agreement also specifies what types of annotations should appear alongside the statutory text, and provides detailed and specific directions as to how Lexis is to generate and arrange this content. The agreement also provides that the Code Revision Commission (the “Commission”) supervises the work of Lexis and has final editorial control over the contents of the OCGA.
The Commission is a body established by the Georgia General Assembly in 1977 that was originally tasked with undertaking the recodification of all of Georgia’s laws, a project that had not been done since 1933. The Commission is comprised of Georgia officials, including the Lieutenant Governor, four members of the Georgia Senate, the Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, four additional members of the Georgia House of Representatives, and five membersappointed by the president of the State Bar of Georgia. Following its successful recodification of Georgia law and the publication of the OCGA in 1982, the Commission is now responsible for updating the OCGA and supervising Lexis’s editing and publication of the OCGA."
[1] http://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201711589....
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A solution to how ridiculous old laws are is automatically expire them This sort of legal amnesia has major drawbacks. Hand politicians the opportunity to make crisis and they'll take advantage of it. Do we really want debt-limit style brinksmanship around murder statutes? Moreover, cleanly sunsetting laws within our common law system is hard. Case law builds on statute. Regularly wiping away vast portions of case…
> This sort of legal amnesia has major drawbacks. Hand politicians the opportunity to make crisis and they'll take advantage of it. Do we really want debt-limit style brinksmanship around murder statutes Yes. Presumably politicians don't want to be murdered by their opposition. It wouldn't lapse more than once.
Really the abuse of "terrrorism" so blatantly even by the standards of a government should qualify for some pretty damn harsh defamation law to the officials trying to hide behind the state. Those sorts of abuses of power are the kind of thing where we actually do need to be "tough on crime" for if we wish to be remotely free.
I'm not sure on which law this whole fad is based on. Is it an old law? > [...] The last time the Supreme Court addressed the matter, in 1888, it ruled that “the whole work done by the judges constitutes the authentic exposition and interpretation of the law, which, binding every citizen, is free for publication to all.” A solution to how ridiculous old laws are is automatically expire them. That way, the politicians…
England had a case in the 1800s where everyone forgot that trial by battle still existed from the middle ages. Someone invoked it and it was upheld, but parliament quickly found it within them to repeal the law after that case.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes the law will refer to a third party set of codes. For example, the law might say that it's illegal to operate a pressure vessel unless in satisfies all the requirements of ASME Section VIII Division 1 or 2. As you might guess, the ASME boiler and pressure vessel code is a copyrighted work owned by the ASME.
This is indeed a problem, but doesn't appear to be the issue in this case. In a sense, this is the opposite. It's more like: The law says: pressure vessels must be pretty sturdy even when really hot. A standard comes along and proclaims to abide by said law, while fleshing out the details of how sturdy and how hot. Lawyers and judges then make reference to it as what the law always meant, and effectively give it lega…
Sometimes it's a bit less direct. They law might require a vessel operator to have insurance and the insurance company will demand that the vessel conform to some private code.
This is what they accused Aaron Swartz of too. "Misdemeanor Terrorism" was one of the charges I believe. The lawyer that said that this is 'terrorism' should be disbarred. This is borderline slander.
......misdemeanor terrorism. How does that term even exist? Is that like flying a Cessna into the World Trade Center instead of a Boeing 757? Agree with you there. Either it’s terrorism or it isn’t.
* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Tampa_Cessna_172_crash
* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Austin_suicide_attack
Curiously they both seem to have been described as “not” terrorism (though I’m not totally sure that was the final conclusion).