Supreme Court Practice Note 9 of 2011 was signed last month. It replaces Practice Notes No 3 of 2004 and No 1 of 2006.The Note lends increased legitimacy to medium neutral citations and might even help to reduce the amount of unnecessary photocopying that goes on. It also draws attention to the preference for Rich …
Tag: legal research
Australian Crime Commission v Stoddart [2011] HCA 47: No spousal privilege at common law
There is no common law privilege against incriminating your spouse.There never has been, it seems. Centuries ago in Britain a wife was neither competent or compellable to give evidence against her husband due to the legal fiction (derived from the Bible) that man and wife were the one flesh. Even by the time of the …
Getting AROUND
Hat tip to Lauren K at Legal Research Rescue, a useful (if occasional) source of information about new techniques for legal research. We've referred to her site here before, but not for a while. It has many quick tips to help the non-tech savvy find what they are looking for, like this simple one about …
The law of unintended consequences
The Judicial College's Charge Book has this to say about the assessment of witnesses (at 1.6.1.5):It is generally a misdirection to tell the jury that if they think a witness has an interest in the outcome, they should scrutinise their evidence closely. This is because the jury will likely conclude that the accused has the …
Written advocacy gets a fillip
The Commercial Court recently hosted a workshop on legal writing by well-known writer and lecturer Bryan Garner. I hoped to attend, but couldn't make it. Shame really, because the opportunity to see Garner first-hand without needing to travel to the USA probably won't come along for a while.Garner is the current author of Black's Law …