A wide, living rainbow arcs across the natural world. Diversity rules in sexuality, just as it does in the rest of biology. This natural variety does not provide ready-made moral guidance. But to claim that the only natural forms of sex and pair bonding occur between unambiguous males and females is to ignore the facts of human biology. Let those who wish for marriage to be “founded in nature” take note: the view outside the Supreme Court is full of life’s beautiful sexual variegation.
Mr. Churchill SuedReading Official Papers When Car Collided.
Having given evidence in the King’s Bench Division in defence of an action arising out of a motor-car accident, Mr. Winston Churchill, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had the satisfaction of hearing the jury return a verdict in his favour. The case, it transpired, was defended by an insurance company, and later in the day Mr. Churchill intimated to their solicitor that he was unwilling that plaintiff should suffer out-of-pocket loss for an accident in which he was concerned, and he was ready to make an ex-gratia payment to him of £25, provided it could be arranged that he received the money himself.
The action was brought by Mr. Arthur B. Crew, fishmonger, of Biggin Hill, who alleged that there was negligence on the part of Mr. Churchill’s chauffeur, which resulted in a collision between his car and plaintiff’s van. The accident occurred on the Chancellor’s journey to London from his house near Westerham, and it was contended on behalf of Mr. Crew that Mr. Churchill’s car was travelling at a great speed. Mr. Crew had two ribs broken, an ear split, and an arm badly bruised.
Mr. Churchill, in the witness-box, observed that just before the accident he was reading official papers from his document box, which was open beside him. Two maidservants sat in the front by the side of the chauffeur, and a plainclothes officer was in the closed part with him. He noticed nothing unusual about the pace of the car, and certainly would have noticed if the car was going at a tremendous speed, as suggested. He did notice that the brakes were violently applied, but when the cars collided there was no violent impact. He was not thrown out of his seat or propelled forward in any way.
Mr. Roland Oliver, K.C., cross-examining:
Do you make a habit of allowing yourself a certain time to get from your home to Downing-street?— Yes.
How much do you allow?—About one hour and 10 minutes.
Do you sometimes do it in less?—Yes. It depends on the state of the traffic.
Sir Patrick Hastings, K.C., the defence, pointed out that the distance of the run was 23 miles. The jury returned a verdict for Mr. Churchill, and Mr. Justice Horridge directed that a sum of money paid into court should be handed Mr. Crew.
News of the World, 27 March 1927, p. 5
...(here, the drama is captured in an exciting aerial view)...
...and brought him to justice.
Lock the bastard up and throw away the key, I say. (Image via)Your book argues that we often use the term "eye for an eye" to describe a harsh kind of justice from the past. But talionic societies could be said to put a higher value on human life and the human body than we do. They were much more committed to finding the exact worth of body parts and lives. So, let's say you poke out my eye...
Then, instantly, my eye becomes yours. To get the value exactly right, we say an eye is worth an eye. You have a right to my eye. Now you can say to me, "I'm going to take your eye." Then I'm going to say, "Hey, what would you be willing to accept instead?" It becomes an initial bargaining position.
If you want victims to be more highly valued and you want real, adequate compensation, this is how to do it. Now if I offer you what some lousy insurance company says your eye is worth -- say, $100,000 -- you'll say, "No way! I would never have let you take my eye for that." Instead, you can be sure I'll put the same value on not losing my eye that you would have put on yours, and I will pay you that amount to keep my own eye. How about $5 million? Let's start there. And we'll bargain it out.
When people compare modern ideas of justice with the old idea of "eye for an eye," they often talk about the difference between justice and revenge.
There is no difference. The literature on punishment and retribution, the philosophical and legal literature, doesn't understand revenge. They talk about revenge as going postal, the lawless, crazed overvaluation of your own harm. But if you look at real honor cultures and real revenge cultures, they were measurers and proportionalists to the extreme. What they would call revenge is simply paying back exactly what was owed. No more, no less.
The law of the talion was not a law issued by a government to regulate criminal matters. It was tort law, a compensation principle dictating how much private party A owes private party B for the harm A did to B.
With little left to lose, Bahrami took the unusual step of asking the court for qisas, or eye-for-an-eye retribution as allowed under Islamic law.This means:
Courts usually order families of the accused to pay "blood money" for the crimes. But Bahrami insisted on the punishment.
Movahedi was sentenced to five drips of sulfuric acid in each eye. His father said he was "incredibly sorry" for what had happened. "If Ameneh is really blind, the verdict against my son must be implemented," he said.
Under Iranian law, a convict has 20 days to appeal the verdict. If Movahedi fails to do so, the punishment will be carried out on a date decided by the judiciary.
More than two weeks ago, Movahedi was led into court by two policemen. He showed no remorse when the court ruled on the case. When the judge asked whether he was ready for his punishment, Movahedi said that he still loved Bahrami but that if she asked for his eyes to be taken out, he would seek the same punishment for her.
"They must also completely empty out her eyes, since I'm not sure that she cannot secretly see," he said. "The newspapers have made this a huge case, but I haven't done anything bad."
Beginning last night, St. Paul was the most militarized I have ever seen an American city be, even more so than Manhattan in the week of 9/11 -- with troops of federal, state and local law enforcement agents marching around with riot gear, machine guns, and tear gas cannisters, shouting military chants and marching in military formations. Humvees and law enforcement officers with rifles were posted on various buildings and balconies. Numerous protesters and observers were tear gassed and injured.
According to the National Association of Medical Examiners, a doctor should perform no more than 250 autopsies per year. Dr. Hayne has testified that he performs 1,200 to 1,800 autopsies per year. Sources I spoke with who have visited Hayne's practice say he and his assistants will frequently have multiple bodies open at once, sometimes smoking cigars and even eating sandwiches while moving from corpse to corpse. They prefer to work at night, adding to their macabre reputation.
Hayne isn't board-certified in forensic pathology, though he often testifies that he is. The only accepted certifying organization for forensic pathology is the American Board of Pathology. Hayne took that group's exam in the 1980s and failed it. Hayne's pal Dr. West is even worse. West has been subject to exposés by 60 Minutes, Time, and Newsweek. He once claimed he could definitively trace the bite marks in a half-eaten bologna sandwich left at the crime scene back to the defendant. He has compared his bite-mark virtuosity to Jesus Christ and Itzhak Perlman. And he claims to have invented a revolutionary system of identifying bite marks using yellow goggles and iridescent light that, conveniently, he says can't be photographed or duplicated.
Under state law, this whole process is supposed to be overseen by a board-certified state medical examiner. The last two people to hold that office, Dr. Lloyd White from 1988 to 1992 and Dr. Emily Ward from 1993 to 1995, were appalled at the way the state was handling death investigations. Both tried to implement reforms. And both were met with fiery resistance. Dr. Ward's tenure was particularly raucous. West (who at the time was the elected county coroner for Forrest County) circulated a petition signed by slightly more than half the state's coroners calling for her resignation. The legislature has largely refused to fund the office since. It's been vacant since 1995.
The problem here is that recognising the authority of a communal religious court to decide finally and authoritatively about such a question would in effect not merely allow an additional layer of legal routes for resolving conflicts and ordering behaviour but would actually deprive members of the minority community of rights and liberties that they were entitled to enjoy as citizens; and while a legal system might properly admit structures or protocols that embody the diversity of moral reasoning in a plural society by allowing scope for a minority group to administer its affairs according to its own convictions, it can hardly admit or 'license' protocols that effectively take away the rights it acknowledges as generally valid.Yes and yes.
'The systematic erosion of the rule of law in America has many aspects, and one significant one is that conservatives have been trained that they have the right to have judges issue rulings that produce outcomes they like, and when that doesn't happen, it means the judicial process is flawed and corrupt. Put another way, those marching under the banner purportedly opposed to "judicial activism" have been taught that they are entitled to have courts ignore the law in order to ensure the outcomes they want.'So says Glenn Greenwald, in a lengthy, erudite and rather angry article about right-wing whingeing about 'judicial activism'.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
A brief prepared by a group that agrees with the judge's decision has made a similar point:The decision ... cites the second comma (the one after “state”) as proof that the Second Amendment does not merely protect the “collective” right of states to maintain their militias, but endows each citizen with an “individual” right to carry a gun, regardless of membership in the local militia.
How does a mere comma do that? According to the court, the second comma divides the amendment into two clauses: one “prefatory” and the other “operative.” On this reading, the bit about a well-regulated militia is just preliminary throat clearing; the framers don’t really get down to business until they start talking about “the right of the people ... shall not be infringed.”
Nelson Lund, a professor of law at George Mason University, argues that everything before the second comma is an “absolute phrase” and, therefore, does not modify anything in the main clause. Professor Lund states that the Second Amendment “has exactly the same meaning that it would have if the preamble had been omitted.”In his essay, Freedman looks at the issue of 18th century comma usage and, by way of a little Latin, reaches the following -- fully sensible -- conclusion:
Not that arguments about punctuation are going to convince anyone who already has a strong view on this matter. But still, it's a well-written (and punctuated) essay.The best way to make sense of the Second Amendment is to take away all the commas (which, I know, means that only outlaws will have commas). Without the distracting commas, one can focus on the grammar of the sentence. Professor Lund is correct that the clause about a well-regulated militia is “absolute,” but only in the sense that it is grammatically independent of the main clause, not that it is logically unrelated. To the contrary, absolute clauses typically provide a causal or temporal context for the main clause.
The founders — most of whom were classically educated — would have recognized this rhetorical device as the “ablative absolute” of Latin prose. To take an example from Horace likely to have been familiar to them: “Caesar, being in command of the earth, I fear neither civil war nor death by violence” (ego nec tumultum nec mori per vim metuam, tenente Caesare terras). The main clause flows logically from the absolute clause: “Because Caesar commands the earth, I fear neither civil war nor death by violence.”
Likewise, when the justices finish diagramming the Second Amendment, they should end up with something that expresses a causal link, like: “Because a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” In other words, the amendment is really about protecting militias, notwithstanding the originalist arguments to the contrary.
"Mr. Speaker, I said the honourable member was a liar it is true and I am sorry for it. The honourable gentleman may place the punctuation where he pleases."
