RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: OZschwitz: A year when the law was an ass  Fri Dec 11, 2009 1:14 am | |
| The year is about to slam shut. Now is as good a time as any to collect our thoughts, kick back our feet on the walnut credenza and reflect on where we've been and what lies ahead.
The law offers rich pickings. We all exist ''under the law'', so to speak. The carefully crafted imagery is that the law is on top of us and we look up to its majesty and exquisite finery. There is much to inspire us.
The year started awkwardly, with the retirement from the High Court of Mr Justice Michael Kirby. He cut a lonely figure on the bench, as his brother and sister judges thought there was an iron-clad precedent that dictated they stay away. His Honour bravely endured wave upon wave of his nominated well-wishers praising his service to the nation and its people.
Kirby was suitably modest in his own remarks. He told of a conversation he had with a taxi driver during which he carefully explained sections 71 and 72 of the constitution and the requirement that he retire at age 70.
''There was a long pause. I waited for him to say 'But you don't look 70'. He never did … After I alighted, the driver drove off very slowly into the distance. I can swear that I saw tears streaming down his cheeks.''
That sad event was followed in swift order by an even sadder one: the imposition of a minimum two years' porridge for the former Federal Court judge and Living National Treasure, Marcus Einfeld. Lying to evade a $77 speeding fine was the root cause of the problem. Only later in the year did we learn during an appeal application against this ''excessive'' sentence that Einfeld was bipolar and that at the time he was sentenced this was undiagnosed.
In the meantime, the ''Einfeld defence'' for traffic offences has gained in popularity. The NSW Police Integrity Commission, in an inquiry known as Operation Horseshoe, has identified nine coppers, from constables to inspectors, alleged to have used false statutory declarations to evade traffic fines.
A Melbourne magistrate, Carmen Randazzo, resigned from her post after she had incorrectly named her aged father as the driver of her speeding car. No charges were laid and now Randazzo has applied to rejoin the Victorian bar.
A British barrister, John Stiles, allegedly claimed people in Mexico were driving his vehicle, clocked multiple times over the limit. Instead of having to explain himself to a court, an inquest was told this month that Stiles had shot himself on the front lawn of his home.
As a vaguely related issue, an insurance company in England did a survey which found that judges, magistrates and lawyers are more than twice as likely as hairdressers and beauticians to have driving convictions.
At the bar, affairs dragged on at a rewarding snail's pace. Endless agitation and introspection about how silks are decided has come to a crisis point in NSW, with a retired Federal Court judge, Roger Gyles, being appointed to work out whether senior counsel are specially created by God, whether it's something their mothers did to them and should whatever it is be more ''transparent''.
In February 2001 the Herald identified six Sydney barristers who had failed to pay proper amounts of tax. Stephen Archer was one of them. Between 1991 and 2002 he was made bankrupt three times, with the sole or principal creditor on each occasion being the Australian Taxation Office.
It took until last month for the wheels of justice to find him guilty of professional misconduct. Moments later the president of the NSW Bar, Tom Bathurst, informed members that ''for some years now the Bar Association has had a close working relationship with the ATO with a view to assisting members who for various reasons have difficulty meeting their tax obligations''. There's a special help line for barristers, staffed by kindly tax assistants. The lesson seems to be: the more atrocious your members' tax avoidance, the greater the kid-glove care.
It's not as though all the inspiration from the majesty of the law is confined to Australia. From overseas there is a healthy supply of motivational uplift. An inquest heard that a drunken judge, William Everard, 59, slipped on his way home from the pub in Norfolk, England, and drowned in 10 centimetres of water.
The former US attorney-general Alberto Gonzales had his evidence to the Senate judiciary committee, about the US attorney dismissal scandal, turned into an opera called The Gonzales Cantata.
Nothing quite tops the alleged flair shown by a London barrister called Marc Beaumont, who had a ''romantic and intimate love affair'' with a client. She began proceedings against him after the tryst was over, claiming, among other things, that he billed her for their time in bed together. He said be behaved with ''professional objectivity''.
And what can we divine from all this? Fortunately, a lot more of the same in 2010.
LNK
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