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Human rights and wrongs

4th July 2008

To honour our American cousins on Independence Day we’ve tried to place a US bias on this week’s blog. But perhaps because it’s a public holiday there today, important stateside stories are a little thin on the ground.

So we start this edition with a report from their continental brethren in Canada. An opinion piece in the New Brunswick’s Miramichi Leader discusses what one could interpret as the recent About Time Too legislation that finally incorporates native or “First Nation” citizens into the 1977 Human Rights Act. The article focuses as much on the level of coverage that this sort of Good News gets as it does the issue itself. The issue, of course, is complex. The federal government, it seems, had good reason to delay while it amended the related Indian Act (though some might argue that 30 years is something of a prolonged delay), while the term “human rights” is thrown about so much that its meaning has become obscured, so in this context it should by no stretch have a “Guantanamo” interpretation. But this is nonetheless Good News and we’re perhaps doing our bit to spread it through its inclusion here.

Our next story heads south west (or south east for us) to Australia and also concerns recent legislation, this time its implementation two years down the line. In that time, police across the country have seized nearly 5,000 vehicles since “anti-hoon” measures were enacted. Though interesting in its own right, the story grabbed our attention as we initially assumed the anti-hoon angle referred to draconian action against our former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon. Thankfully for the member for Ashfield, “hoon”, contracted from the word “hooligan”, is in fact used by Aussies to refer to dangerous drivers. You heard it here first.

See the Road Safety Act 2006 for related UK legislation.

As some light (or rather lighter) relief, we can’t help directing you to this article in the Guardian. If, like us, you’ve been hooked this week on the BBC’s excellent drama Criminal Justice, you’ll find in this a good read, along with links to other Guardian pieces that show both sides of the authenticity argument. We know a lot of lawyers and we like them, so we’re a little sceptical about their portrayal here, however muddy are the issues dealt with. Perhaps “drama” is the operative word above.

Dealing with another relevant theme in the programme, see the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.

That said, our possible naivety doesn’t extend to thinking that every lawyer on the planet is squeaky clean. And so we end with two dodgy stories: one dealing with a Massachusetts solicitor arrested for breaking and entering; the other, an Ohio city prosecutor who’s won his battle against unfair dismissal. The reason for his departure? Being caught wandering around his employer’s building after hours in the nude. Read within to see his mitigating circumstances; the bare facts we report don’t do them justice.

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