The Legal Soap Box

Skepticlawyer.com.au

The Legal Soap Box - May 8, 2008 - 10:29am

Another reason why I have been a bit distracted lately… after two years of my own little blog, I am moving my blogging services elsewhere.

I have decided to accept an offer to team up with Skepticlawyer (Helen Dale) from Catallaxy, and we are setting up a joint blog, Skepticlawyer. It goes live today! We are both lawyers (obviously) but we have quite different political slants - it just makes for more fun, really - the main thing is that we enjoy each other’s posts. Read more »

Seinfeld makes it to court

The Legal Soap Box - May 3, 2008 - 12:36pm

I’ve written previously on how Alice in Wonderland has made it into many Court judgments. Well, now Jerry and Elaine have made it into a judgment too!

In Parish Oil Co Inc v Dillon Companies Inc, the US Court of Appeals in Colorado mentioned Seinfeld in an anti-trust case: Read more »

Expectant

The Legal Soap Box - April 30, 2008 - 10:41pm

Yes, it’s official now - I am expecting Baby No. 2. Well, most of you probably guessed from my post “Pregnancy is not an illness“. Read more »

The Force definitely wasn’t with him…

The Legal Soap Box - April 24, 2008 - 9:35pm

A drunken man in Wales dressed up in a black bin bag and cape and attacked two cousins with a metal crutch. Why would he do that? Well, apparently he wished to join the Dark Side of the Force. The cousins had recently set up a Jedi church in Holyhead, and were making a film of themselves duelling with lightsabers when the drunken man vaulted the fence and attacked them, shouting “Darth Vader!” as he did so. Read more »

God’s law and the law of the State

The Legal Soap Box - April 18, 2008 - 11:50am

What happens when you have a particular group in society who are not minded to follow the law of the State, but prefer to follow God’s law as they interpret it? Read more »

Now I’m really disturbed

The Legal Soap Box - April 6, 2008 - 10:25pm

Someone found my blog via a google search for “whale penis”. I didn’t even know that I had used that second word in this blog! I know I used the word “whale” in a post featuring a picture of a little boy swimming with a whale.

I don’t even dare think why someone might be searching for that particular term. There’s some sick puppies out there. Read more »

Opes investors fail at first hurdle

The Legal Soap Box - May 3, 2008 - 2:08pm

I know that a some people have lost a lot of money through the collapse of Opes Prime, so it seems a bit ghoulish to be fascinated by it - but there you have it, I can’t help myself - I’m fascinated. There are so many interesting equitable and property law questions raised by it (tracing, equitable mortgages, mere equities, trusts in undifferentiated property), not to mention corporate governance issues. Some of my favourite topics! Read more »

Cause and effect

The Legal Soap Box - April 27, 2008 - 11:35pm

I haven’t been too impressed with ethanol fuels for a while. My concern back then was “that if governments make emotional knee-jerk reactions, the cure may be as bad as the disease it is designed to alleviate.” Read more »

Not so much gibberish as derivative and boring

The Legal Soap Box - April 18, 2008 - 9:37pm

I was rather amused to see that the Judge hearing the J.K. Rowling copyright infringement case has described Rowling’s plotlines as “gibberish”. Read more »

Jah on their side…

The Legal Soap Box - April 16, 2008 - 6:18pm

This article about the collapse of a legal trial against some Rastafarians cracks me up. Read more »

Toddlers as witnesses

The Legal Soap Box - April 12, 2008 - 10:25am

The other day, I was driving my 2 year old daughter to creche. She announced with satisfaction and great confidence from the back of the car, “One day, Mummy broke my fingers.” I saw her make an illustrative wiggle of the said fingers in the rear view mirror.

“What?” I cried with horror. “I have never done that. What are you talking about?”

“Mummy shut my fingers in the door at Nanny and Papa’s and I did cry and Nanny got bandaids for me,” she explained. Read more »

Property law and the One Ring

The Legal Soap Box - April 5, 2008 - 12:57am

Can it really be true? Yes, it is true. The blog Law is Cool features an essay about Lord of the Rings from a property law perspective! Here is a brief extract:

Consider the following facts which seem ripped from a first year property law exam: Read more »

Some people will try anything

The Legal Soap Box - March 31, 2008 - 7:14pm

I thought I’d seen all the pathetic excuses possible for trying to get out of legal proceedings (including seceding from Australia, declaring the Court to be a hotbed of Freemasons and/or claiming that the Constitution is invalid for spurious reasons). But this is one of the best: Read more »

Earth Hour - what a crock

The Legal Soap Box - March 30, 2008 - 11:13pm

I am very pleased that I managed to avoid Earth Hour: what an absolute crock. In fact, I was at a Chinese restaurant at the relevant time. “I wonder if they’ll turn out the lights?” mused my husband. Not a chance, and thank goodness for that. Read more »