^^^ They'd need to bring back the right of jury trials too. How many people try to worm their way out of that?
Rolling your eyes ( here ) and having one-on-one meetings with your staff ( here ) might also get you sued as they could be considered as bullying! Note Eric Abetz's comments in the first article Along the lines of the "reasonably likely to cause offence" discussed previously. Who the heck writes these things?
Who reckons social media is on the radar? Besides things like the Arab spring saw this in news this morning: Police enforcement would be so much more effective if social media was monitored and controlled, yes? Can see Roxon on TV now rabbiting on about "responsible use", "magnet for trouble", "importance for knowing ...", "help law enforcement", "prevent unwanted ...", "won't somebody please think of the children?" etc.
A one page fact sheet that I was emailed on the proposed "Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill" that hasn't had anywhere near enough media attention.
"Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill" - Canada has gone through this problem for near on 10 years. They even have a human rights commission that acts as a Napoleonic/Continental-style Inquisitional court whom the commission use to target anyone who expresses an unpopular opinion. Or even an orthodox opinion when it comes to traditional culture. Sad all the Anglosphere countries have to go through all the same problems.
Allowing only a Government line approved message in western countries is nothing new. In Germany for example its a crime to deny the holocaust happened as David Irving found out when he got sent to the slammer for a couple of years. Fortunately we have Common Law in Australia but in reality, whos going to go to the High Court to enforce your freedom of speech? You'd be risking $100k in lawyer fees if you lost so whats the point ?
This is an interesting contemporary example of the unintended side effects of reducing media freedoms. Lance Armstrong's drug use was potentially hidden for years by UK's media laws (I deliberately say "potentially" because it's not clear why reporters in other countries didn't run with the story). http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/lance-armstrong/4473370
People will always find a way to express free speech, eg. onion web. Google 'tor browser' and have a read. This is how thousands of people are able to get drugs delivered to their door, whilst remaining anonymous. I downloaded the program to have a browse. It works very slowly, but the info sent is heavily encrypted and difficult for anyone to track. It can be great for protecting your privacy, although DO NOT EVER search for porn on this tor network. There are some sick farkers out there that love have anonymity.
There isn't anything inherently wrong with an Inquisitorial court, it just works differently. For example, the juge d'Instruction acts independently in pro-actively investigating cases and isn't involved in the trial phase of a prosecution. The trial phase is operates as what we'd consider a "normal" adversarial system. That means cases tend not to even go to trial unless the investigating judge is reasonably confident they know whodunnit based on the evidence they have. They don't ignore evidence which doesn't happen to suit the police's case either - if they find evidence to exonerate a suspect, they tell the police to go back and look for another suspect. Having the court operate in parallel to law enforcement is arguably more efficient and unarguably less likely to end up with shoddy plea bargaining after the cops whack someone with a dozen charges and offer to knock it back down to one small one if the defendant admits they're guilty of it. The investigating judge knows beforehand what can be proved and what can't be so the suspect only gets charged with crimes they're likely to be successfully prosecuted for. If they load the charge sheet, the trial judge will get annoyed at all the frivolous charges and the investigating judge will get a bad reputation for their poor procedure and wasting the trial court's time. That said, Canada does have a problem with the defamation law. It's a bad law, but it's quite well enforced, so the problem lies more with the politicians than the legal system.
If it does pass the solution is mass civil disobediance directed at Comrade Roxon & a Wong who can't do anything right Kind Regards non recourse
May be too early to say "Yay", but Roxon seems to be listening to common sense and is backing down. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-31/roxon-moves-to-scrap-controversial-discrimination-law/4492742 I find the comment "asked her department to redraft sections of the legislation" funny. Makes it sound like serious, hard work. It'll take longer to send it to the printer than to search and delete a few words. Whew! Another hard day's work at the department. Better call three meetings to make sure we do it properly
There is everything wrong with it. The judge you call the investigating judge usually ends up being the trial judge too. The principal of "innocent until proven guilty" is a British Common Law principal that does not exist as we understand it under the European inquisitorial system where the judge is in practice running the prosecution. And that's just the start. Have you heard of the European Arrest Warrant? Lots of opposition to it in the UK as its' set up under an inquisitorial system that allows prosecutors to arrest a suspect and extradite them and only then start their investigation - resulting in many cases of people arrested and held without charge while the e.g. Bulgarian Police go about their regular duties. When they find the time they may conduct parts of their investigation and 6 months later realise they have the wrong suspect. They don't even have a bail application mention with a magistrate to determine if the person should be held. They are just held indefinitely. Common Law is our heritage, and it's a much fairer system than that derived by a dictator who it took the British two continental wars to subdue (Napoleon).
^ The Spanish system pre-dating Napolean was (still is) the Inquisatorial system was it not? I seem to remember reading about the dynamics of the Spanish Bureaucracy during the Inquisition days and it was all guilty until proven innocent (with a bit of torture thrown in when they could organise the relevent "committee members" to all turn up at the same time and laboriously documented etc). Your history is much better than mine on all this.
^ Well theres a good question. I am unsure if the Spanish actually had a codified system of law operating under the inquisitors, as opposed to Napoleon who standardised and codified the French inquisitorial system and spread it to everywhere he conquered. I may have do some reading! [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAn7baRbhx4[/youtube]
