Over at the Sydney Morning Herald website Richard Ackland summed up some of the more memorable happenings in Australian legal circles in 2007, but two stood out for me:
1) JUSTICE SLEEPS IN NSW
“The NSW Court of Appeal upheld the right of judges to get in some important sleep time while trying cases. It was found in Cesan v DPP that justice can still be done by unconscious or ‘dormant’ presiding trial judges.”
and
2) RULE OF LAW TRIUMPHANT!
“And for the most significant legal moment of the year there is the enduring spectacle of an Australian citizen pleading ‘guilty’ before an improperly constituted foreign ‘court’ for a war crime that did not exist – all with the connivance of the Australian government.”
Neither of these stories give me a warm fuzzy feeling about the rule of law in Australia.
Aide Mémoire 