As a lifelong student of law, I am trained to check everything thrice and still leave myself wiggle room.

I am, therefore, surprised by people’s chutzpah in holding forth about (even specialised) matters about which they have zero knowledge or experience –or qualifications: +

I have been 'found short and marked up' by several assorted engineers ,chartered accountants & businessmen (in each case with 0 legal qualifications)* on the standard ‘England and Wales’ governing law clause-which has been boldly 'corrected' to 'UK law' , +
and in one case, believe it or not, the ‘kings’ law’(the Apostrophe too as placed!)

*Incidentally, besides professional legal qualifications and many years of International Project Finance legal experience, I have a distinction in Private International Law (that deals with+
governing law clauses) from one of England's top universities.

My English language skills have been found 'wanting' by the European CEO of a leading EPC Contractor who informed me : ‘The English no goood’ .+
This gentleman’s standard letter ‘in English’ consists of throwing in a few words and relying on the reader’s goodwill - to supply all connecting grammar. +
But what stung the most was being 'taken to task' by a gentleman -whose mother tongue is Marathi and who reads Urdu in the Devanagari and not its original script-on my Urdu pronunciation of what he said was Faiz’s ‘gazal’ : ‘mujh se pehli si mohabbat meray mehboob na maang’. +
He went on to give me a DEVASTATING ‘reading’ - which broke every Urdu speaking* ‘ahle – zaban’ bone in my body and rendered me completely speechless-in any known language.+
* I descend from ‘an entrenched’ Urdu speaking ahle -zaban ('speaker and keepers' of Urdu) background - even the simplest mispronunciation of the full throat qāf (common enough even among Urdu speakers) registers a jarring note to my fine tuned years.
ears and years😂

More from Law

Pretty much every professional field EXCEPT police have clear, rigorous, transparent consequences for unethical behavior, negligence and malpractice.


The idea that we can "disbar" lawyers but not police is absolute foolishness.

All the factors that make disbarment a necessary tool for lawyers apply to cops... except that cops don't need to be qualified in the first place.

It is a rank absurdity of the criminal justice system that one needs to be educated and certified with a degree in order to argue on behalf of someone's life in court, but to have no qualifications necessary to detain, assault, or prematurely end that same life.

There are countless circumstances in which a lawyer's unethical behavior will result in them not only losing their job but never being able to practice it again.

But corrupt and murderous cops can be rehired indefinitely.

A lawyer's entire career can be ended forever if they were found to have knowingly put someone on a stand to lie.

Police officers however are allowed to lie in court on the stand under oath.

So much that lawyers aren't penalized for putting cops on the stand to lie.
Better late than never. Here we go. What does this deal mean for borders, border formalities, customs & trade facilitation?

Long one. TL:DR very little at the moment but has potential

/1


Borders
When compared to no deal the deal changes very little in terms of border procedures. All formalities and checks will still be required.

Reminder - we're not starting from 0 here – both our container ports and our ro-ro ports are already congested

/2

On top of that, all the issues related to border readiness: lack of capacity and space, IT systems not ready, shortages of customs agents, treader readiness – have not been solved.

The deal doesn’t help with that.

/3


Here is where we are:
☑️The UK will phase-in border formalities over 6 months (customs and SPS)
☑️The EU will introduce full formalities in 3 days (customs + SPS)
☑️Irish Sea border also fully operational in 3 days with some short-term SPS easements

/4

Pre-notifications (safety & security declarations) not initially required on the UK side, needed for imports into the EU.

So what's in the deal?

/5
There is a now-relevant parallel here to the difference here between matters before a judge & matters before a jury. Judges are far more reluctant to strike testimony or evidence if they are the only recipients of it, with the theory being that they are really smart about ...


law stuff & will know what they can & can't consider. For instance, there is a long-held rule that a fact witness can't make legal arguments, only a lawyer. So what will happen in a motion for summary judgment, where the entire proceeding is on paper, will play out like this:

1) Defendant makes a motion for summary judgment. It includes a sworn declaration from some fact witness.

2) The declaration includes all sorts of legal arguments about why the defendant should win. Often the declaration includes arguments the brief didn't even make.

Defendants (especially DOJ-represented ones) often do this to get around the word or page-limits placed on briefs.

3) Plaintiff moves to strike the declaration for its inclusion of inadmissible legal arguments.

4) Judge denies the motion to strike, on the grounds that a ...

judge is a sophisticated consumer of evidence & can choose what to consider & what to ignore, unlike a jury.

The legal fiction behind this impeachment exception is that Senators are also smart enough to know what to listen to & what to ignore. Now, that may not be ACCURATE, ...
I’ve been reading lots recently about the interaction between First Amendment law and free speech principles with respect to online services in light of the events of the last few weeks.

And I have thoughts (MY OWN). So, I’m sorry ... a thread 1/25

One of the main reasons I think users are best served by a recognition that social media services have 1st Amendment rights to curate the content on their sites is because many users want filtered content, either by topic, or by behavior, or other. 2/

So online services should have the right to do this filtering, and to give their users the tools to do so too. For more detail see our Prager U amicus brief
https://t.co/73PswB9Q7Q 3/

So, I disagree with my friends (and others) who say that every online service should apply First Amendment rules, even though they cannot be required to do so. There are both practical and policy reasons why I don’t like this. 4/

Most obviously, the 1st Amendment reflects only one national legal system when this is inherently an international issue. So it’s politically messy, even if you think a 1st Amendment-based policy will be most speech-protective (though probably only non-sexual speakers). 5/

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