NZ Bill of Rights Act
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Wednesday, November 11th, 2009Two interesting developments in the tug-of-war between privacy and defamation. The first comes in a UK injunction case. Justice Tugendhat granted an injunction to a celebrity of some sort (or at least, someone with “some public reputation”) restraining the publication of information about his encounters at his home with a prostitute some ten years ago. […]
Siemer in contempt again?
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009Yet another chapter is written in the Vince Siemer saga. In this episode, Vince decides that a High Court order suppressing publication of a decision doesn’t apply to him. The decision concerned some pre-trial rulings in concerning the Uruwera defendants, so it’s pretty big deal. Justice Winkelmann suppressed the decision, it seems, out of concern […]
Sparking debate
Monday, August 10th, 2009I’ll be in the Court of Appeal with Tony Shaw tomorrow trying to make the world safe for flag-burners. Specifically: Valerie Morse, who lit a flag over the road from the Anzac Day dawn service at Wellington’s Cenotaph in 2007 to protest our militaristic foreign policy. She’s been convicted of offensive behaviour. Is this a […]
How I think the Bill of Rights is supposed to work
Sunday, June 28th, 2009I’ve mentioned an article I wrote with Claudia Geiringer about the Bill of Rights Act for Law, Liberty and Legislation – Essays in Honour of John Burrows QC. It’s called “Moving from Self-Justication to Demonstrable Justification – the Bill of Rights and the Broadcasting Standards Authority”. It has already been cited favourably in a couple […]
TV3 broadcasts “I shot the prick” tape extract
Friday, June 12th, 2009Here. Was it legal? As I understand it, there’s still an application before the High Court for access to the deleted part of the tape from the Court file. It might be happening right now. But I’m not aware of any decision granting access yet. TV3 told us that “the Supreme Court said the material […]
Times held in contempt for interviewing jurors
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009The Times of London has been convicted of contempt for quoting the foreman of a jury criticising the result of a baby death case. (It was a 10-2 majority verdict; he was in the minority). His point: the jury was overwhelmed by expert evidence, which at the end of the day could only be speculative. He said: […]
“Stop the romp”
Friday, April 3rd, 2009The beautiful and talented Claudia Geiringer debuts in the blogosphere with a plea to the Nats to take seriously their own Attorney-General’s legal advice about Bill of Rights problems with their legislation – and not railroad their dodgy bills through Parliament without allowing a decent chance to debate them. [Update: Dean Knight weighs in here, […]
Geddis on Crow
Friday, March 13th, 2009My mate Andrew Geddis has been sparring with me a bit in the comments section on this blog, and is always good value. In this thoughtful post at Pundit, Andrew rightly takes on the Auckland City Council for trying to do an end-run around the NZ Bill of Rights Act in its attempt to squelch […]
A post on 92A that David Farrar probably won’t link to
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009You may have noticed that I didn’t join the blackout in protest against section 92A. It’s not that I don’t have concerns about the law. As you can see from the post below, it doesn’t seem to me that it’s been well thought through. I’m open to the idea that it goes too far. But […]
Officials drop the BORA on 92A
Monday, February 23rd, 2009Our Bill of Rights vetting process has failed miserably again. This is the system that’s supposed to pick up rights issues when a Bill is introduced to Parliament and consider whether the proposals are demonstrably justified. When a Bill affects free speech, officials are supposed to highlight the problem and ask questions like: “What’s the […]
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