Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Quote of the Day’ Category

Law School Quote of the Day #16

Posted in Going to law school, Linguistics, Quote of the Day, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

“My Lords, it would I think be conducive to clarity of analysis of the ingredients of a crime that is created by statute, as are the great majority of criminal offences today, if we were to avoid bad Latin and instead to think and speak … about the conduct of the accused and his state of mind at the time of that conduct, instead of speaking of the actus reus and mens rea.” ~ Lord Diplock in R v Miller, [1983] 1 All ER 978 (House of Lords, England)

So what is actus reus? Lord Diplock explains, earlier in this same judgment:

“This expression is derived from … ‘Actus non facit reum, nisi mens sit rea,’ by converting incorrectly into an adjective the word reus which was there used correctly in the accusative case as a noun.”

Read Full Post »

Law School Quote of the Day #15

Posted in Class politics, Conflict & Dialectics, Going to law school, Labour movement, Quote of the Day, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 14, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

“To be against settlement is not to urge that parties be ‘forced’ to litigate [...] To be against settlement is only to suggest that when the parties settle, society gets less than what appears, and for a price it does not know it is paying. Parties might settle while leaving justice undone [...] To settle for something means to accept less than some ideal.” (more…)

Read Full Post »

Law School Quote of the Day #14

Posted in Class politics, Conflict & Dialectics, Going to law school, Labour movement, Quote of the Day, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 9, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

“If I am a cooperative negotiator and I lay out my facts, and if you are cooperative, and you lay out your facts, then the two of us, as objective, fair-minded adults, can solve any problem … But aggressive negotiators do not see themselves primarily as problem solvers … they are warriors. Their strategy assumes the other side is an enemy to be attacked and defeated and their strategy is well adapted to that end … The question is not: Which strategy should I invariably use? but rather: How can I develop sufficiently as a negotiator that I can appropriately invoke one or the other, depending on the requirements of the situation?” (more…)

Read Full Post »

Law School Quote of the Day – Lucky #13

Posted in Class politics, Conflict & Dialectics, Quote of the Day, tagged , , , , , , , on November 22, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

“Ultimately, courts depend on both the executive and the citizenry to recognize and abide by their judgments” ~ Supreme Court Justices Iacobucci and Arbour for the majority in Doucet-Boudreau v Nova Scotia (Minister of Education) [2003] 3 SCR 3 (more…)

Read Full Post »

Law School Quote of the Day #12

Posted in Going to law school, Quote of the Day, tagged , , , , , , , on November 6, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

“Seeing that it is compulsory to fit seat belts, Parliament must have thought it sensible to wear them. But it did not make it compulsory for anyone to wear a seat belt. Everyone is free to wear it, or not, as he pleases. Free in this sense, that if he does not wear it, he is free from any penalty by the magistrates. Free in the sense that everyone is free to run his head against a brick wall, if he pleases. He can do it if he likes without being punished by the law. But it is not a sensible thing to do. If he does it, it is his own fault; and he has only himself to thank for the consequences” ~ Lord Denning in Froom v Butcher, [1975] 3 All E.R. 520 (C.A.) at pp.525-7

Read Full Post »

Law School Quote of the Day #11

Posted in Going to law school, Quote of the Day, tagged , , , , , on November 2, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

“What promises does the law enforce? The law enforces promises that people expect to be enforced. Why do people expect a particular kind of promise to be enforced? Because those are the ones the courts have always enforced.” ~ Angela Swan, Nicholas C Bala & Barry J Reiter, Contracts: Cases, Notes & Materials 8th ed (LexisNexis, 2010) at 257.

At least the authors of the text preface this with: “There is a kind of circular argument.” Contract Law is FUNNY FUNNY STUFF! (No, really …)

Read Full Post »

Law School Quote of the Day #10

Posted in Conflict & Dialectics, Going to law school, I'm crazy, Labour movement, Quote of the Day, tagged , , , , , , on October 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

“Legal reasoning is about justification, not demonstration – a winning argument is one where the cumulative effect of several different and often inconclusive propositions is enough, relative to a particular context and any other arguments made, to convince someone to pursue one course of action over another.” ~Allan C. Hutchinson, The Law School Book: Succeeding at Law School (Irwin Law: Toronto, 2009) at 113. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Law School Quote of the Day #9

Posted in Going to law school, Living Life (but not THE life!), Quote of the Day, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 19, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

“The law does not impose a duty to eliminate risk. It accepts that competent people have the right to engage in risky activities.” ~ Chief Justice McLachlin in Childs v Desormeaux, Supreme Court of Canada. [2006] S.C.J. No. 18, [2006] 1 S.C.R. 643. at para 39.

I agree with Dean Feldthusen that highlighting personal autonomy and the right to take risks might not be the most compelling way to frame the argument that social hosts should not be held liable for injuries caused to third parties by their drunken guests. I do however, LOVE this quote and think we need reminders now again that there is no life without risk.

Read Full Post »

Law School Quote of the Day #8

Posted in Going to law school, Quote of the Day, tagged , , , , , on October 2, 2011 | 2 Comments »

“In terms of the protection of society, [isolation/imprisonment] is the option of last resort. Even as such, it suffers from the ultimate weakness that if the fundamental requirement of proportionality* is observed, the individual concerned must eventually be released from jail. Experience teaches us that most people emerge from prison a worse threat to society than when they entered. Thus care and restraint must be exercised when imposing a sentence of imprisonment even when the goal is to isolate the offender.” ~Justice of Appeal Wood. in R v Sweeney (1992), 11 C.R. (4th) 1, 71 C.C.C. (3d) 82, 1992 CarswellBC 460 (BC Court of Appeal)

*fundamental requirement of proportionality, put less eloquently, is the idea that “the punishment fits the crime”. It can also encompass the idea that a penalty should be proportional to the “aims” or desired outcome of the penalty, and not excessive.

Read Full Post »

Law School Quote of the Day #6

Posted in Going to law school, Quote of the Day, tagged , , on September 25, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

“To a person unversed in the science or art of legislation it may well seem strange that Parliament has not by now made it a rule to state explicitly what its intention is in a matter which is often of no little importance, instead of leaving it to the courts to discover, by a careful examination and analysis of what is expressly said, what that intention may be supposed probably to be [...] I trust, however, that it will not be thought impertinent, in any sense of that word, to suggest respectfully that those who are responsible for framing legislation might consider whether the traditional practice, which obscures, if it does not conceal, the intention which Parliament has, or must be presumed to have, might not safely be abandoned.”

~Lord Justice (i.e. British Judge) du Parcq, in Cutler v. Wandsworth Stadium Ltd. [1949] A.C. 398

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.