When a lawyer’s son is before the law

September 8, 2010
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A lawyer of Swordplay’s acquaintance finds himself in a fix.

“My teenage son is to be interviewed by the local constable,” he tells us. “He is alleged to have committed an offence.”

We gasp, for such seems the appropriate response, and then ask: is it serious?

“No, it is not,” our troubled legal friend tells us. “In the great scheme of things, my son’s alleged transgression is about as de minimis as they get.”

For a split second, we wonder if said teenage son is cognisant of lawyerly terms of art such as de minimis, but rapidly conclude that the answer to this question is not a sine qua non of further discourse. And so we press on. That sounds good, we say, relatively speaking, at least.

“Yes,” says the lawyer, “but I am at a loss as to what to do with him. Do I come down hard and ground him, or do I play the liberal card, or do I find a compromise?”

That depends, we aver.

“On what?” asks our man.

On whether you would prefer to deal with your son’s alleged offence as a lawyer, or as a father, or as a father who is a lawyer, or maybe even as a lawyer who is a father.

“I see your point,” says the lawyer. And then, as if to prove that there is no cure for recidivism, he says: “The offence is, after all, de minimis.”

Without prejudice, we add.

Pictured: something out of Kafka. Now there was a man who knew about the law. And had a tough old father, too.

 

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Good work by Rusbridger

February 10, 2012
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The headline says it all: ‘Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger takes pay cut‘.

Dan Sabbagh’s piece says a bit more: said editor ‘emailed staff at the newspaper to say that his salary in the upcoming 2012-13 financial year will be £395,010, compared with £438,900 in the current financial year’.

Some voices say: ‘How worthy.’

Others opine: ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’

But we say: good work by Mr Rusbridger. For the sake of the media’s survival, we hope that others in senior positions in the industry will follow suit.

Image of toolkit allegedly deployed by Alan Rusbridger courtesy of Flickr user LollyKnit.

From the inside of the maze, ethically outwards

February 9, 2012

Curious times in the media; strange days at The Times.

Would ‘Dacre Cards‘ – the system of licensing journalists proposed by Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre – have prevented the embarrassment now palpable at the Times over the NightJack story?

Times editor James Harding’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry seemed heartfelt and contrite, albeit that the paper’s former long-serving and much-respected lawyer, Alastair Brett, seems to have been, er, rather dropped in it. Clearly, mistakes were made with regard to NightJack by young reporter Patrick Foster who, once he had hacked into NightJack’s account and thus discovered his identity, then embarked on a quest to expose it via legitimate methods. This, as Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC put it, was “rather like working from the inside of the maze out”.

But had Foster been licensed via a Dacre Card, would this unsavoury episode in the Times’s history have been avoided?

We suspect not. A raft of laws were in existence at precisely the time when many News of the World journalists seemed to believe that they were entitled to hack any phone they liked. Those laws forbade them from doing so, and yet made no difference. Aside from the obvious objection to them – that they will squeeze out freelancers and citizen journalists – Dacre Cards would simply amount to something to circumvent.

What is really required is an ethical shake-up, from top to bottom. Society generally – not just journalists – needs a sense that some things are just plain wrong.

Supreme Court on Twitter

February 6, 2012

Something remarkable happened today. Yes, the Supreme Court launched its Twitter feed. It even has a Twitter policy, one of caveats, disclaimers and little by way of illumination but regardless: who would have thought that the successor body to the House of Lords would stoop to engage with the world of tweets, hashtags and retweets?

We look forward to the day when court business will be conducted via Twitter. Meantime, check out this link for an excellent blog on the Supreme Court.