Law World

By John Crouch. Copyright John Crouch, 1995

Selections from John Crouch's foreign-law column in the Amicus Curiae, a publication of the College of William and Mary law school

Sheathe E'ermore the Burning Lance
For the first time, Parliament authorized English police to chase suspects into Scotland (and vice-versa) without getting a warrant from the other nation's courts. Previously, only the actual victim could do this, by "lawful trod with hound and horn, with hue and cry and all other manner of fresh pursuit," and she had to carry a burning turf on her lance and announce herself to the first person she met to show her "open and honest" intention.

Life-giving public policy
China executes so many people that it can provide organ transfers for all its citizens, not to mention wealthy Americans and Europeans. Executions are held near hospitals, and facilitators are careful not to shoot the organs slated for recycling. In special cases, doctors remove both kidneys before execution. China provides the death penalty for embezzlement, car theft and political intractability.

Pseudo-Islamic ear-swapping
Iraq's secular government imposed Islamic-based penal amputation and face-branding this summer, televising the results intensively for maximum deterrence. Repeat offenders lose feet, which does not happen under real Islamic law. Last month, draft dodgers began forfeiting their ears. Now the government is experiencing some unsupportive reactions. A crowd in southern Iraq stormed a local office of Sadaam Hussein's party and removed several officials' ears. One accused thief had to use a machine gun to pacify the doctor who chopped off his hand.

Judicial Rape
Iranian executioners rape their unmarried female victims as a matter of official policy, because Islamic judges have ruled that if they remain virgins they will go to heaven automatically, even if executed, according to reports collected by the Parliamentary Human Rights Group. Firing squad members draw lots to see who rapes which virgin; then an Islamic judge performs a marriage. The woman is tranquilized, raped and shot. The next day the judge sends her family the marriage certificate and a box of candy.

Lifetime earnings sought as damages in wrongful death case
Somali Jama Adawill's family demanded sixty pregnant camels and a woman to settle his claim against the U.N., whose soldiers killed him when he threw a grenade into a World Food Program office.

The dark side of satanic child abuse
Bishop Auckland, a town in the North of England, enjoyed full-blown Salem-style witch trials in recent months. It began when two children accused their parents of leading an occult sex abuse ring whose practices were identical to those inthe movies Children of the Corn II, Hellraiser and certain music videos. The parents had witnesses as to where they were during the alleged rituals, but police would not talk to them. The children then began accusing neighbors.
Everyone's children were seized, many were arrested, businesses were ruined, homes were vandalized and foreclosed. The accusers' parents spent months in jail, where the mother was beaten by fellow-prisoners, but won bail on their 11th try. Prosecutors dropped the case during the trial, but the parents still cannot see their children alone.
In response, a social workers' group called for curbs on cross-examination of children by defense lawyers. It accused lawyers of trying to discredit children's testimony and suggesting it was imagined.

Human rights obsolete, says liberal judge
High Court judge Sir Stephen Sedley said Britain should reject the European Convention on Human Rights because it is "out of date," being "based on the 19th-century paradigm of the individual whose enemy is the state." It fails to protect people's right not to fear "hate speech," he charged.

Norman feudal law still reigns
In Jersey, one of the Channel Islands, lawyer/developer Richard Falle has asserted his wife's feudal rights over tidal flats where he wants to build a 1,200-boat marina. Under customary Norman law, his absolute dominion extends as far as the seigneur can ride his horse into the English Channel at low tide, and the local government has no power over him. Jersey is in fealty to the Crown but is not subject to Parliament, so its law has not changed much in this millennium. This particular law probably evolved as a way to get rid of unneeded seigneurs.

Minister Understands Youth
A loud crash interrupted Unitarian minister Robert Boyes's sermon on "Greater Understanding of the Problems of Youth" in Cleveland, England. A teenager had thrown a brick through Boyes's car window. "I would love to get my hands on the little [graphic anti-homosexual expletive] who did it so I could give him some words of the Lord," Boyes remarked.

They Blame America For This Nonsense, You Know
Praising his "remorse," Judge Robert Pryor sentenced Patrick Weighell to "anger management therapy" for habitually squeezing and shaking his son, deliberately breaking 23 bones. He must keep a "hassle log" and "act out." Weighell said he'd prefer jail. His girlfriend agreed, "He's a bastard. I never want to see him again."

It Couldn't Happen Here
Prodded by a Parliamentary committee, Britain's Child Support Agency said it would pay reparations to men it wrongly accused of being deadbeat dads, and to others who suffered great distress from its mistakes, in addition to paying damages for the financial harm it has caused.

Spare The Rod, Spoil Civilization
Prison never rehabilitates, and only deters those who haven't been there, said seven leading British judges. Judge Laws demanded "retribution," not therapeutic "social control" that denies the existence of free will. He sought less wasteful "means of making criminals suffer" as they used to when flogged or pilloried, and praised weekend jail. Suspended sentences "scared" convicts straight but were banned in 1991, Lord Acker recalled. He said the true problem was permissive, amoral parenting. Judge Tuckey advised legalizing "possibly all drugs."

Euro-Suit against Support Agency
Henry Logan of Denny, Scotland, sued the Child Support Agency in the European Court of Human Rights for doubling his payments so he cannot afford to visit his children. If he does not visit, his ex may get his visiting rights revoked. The European Convention on Human Rights protects the right to "private and family life" against state "interference."

Jurassic Court
An Israeli rabbinical court told a dairy to take dinosaurs off its milk carton labels or lose kosher status, on the grounds that the ungainly creatures cast a doubtful shadow over the book of Genesis.

Racial Purity Law
France now has a policy of preventing citizens from marrying people from its former colonies. Most courts uphold it.

Shake Hands with Mr. Snake
Capital convicts should have to wrestle cobras in public aquariums, said Manila judge Maximiliano Asuncion.

"Get tough" on deadbeats by being one
Pip Spencer received a parking ticket for $33 million in Moulton, Engl. He has seven days to pay. (London Times). Spencer actually need not worry; he can simply use a technique the Child Support Agency pioneered. When Keith Richards of Co. Durham, Engl. won $2,975.00 in an appeal against the agency, it said it would pay the judgment at $2.25 a week. It had increased his support payments 470 percent.

Whips, bondage needed
Juries should be able to recommend such public and corporal punishments as flogging and the pillory, said former Solicitor General Lord McCluskey, a Scottish High Court judge, because prison "doesn't deter, it doesn't rehabilitate, it doesn't [make] wrong-doers suffer, it is desperately expensive" and it leaves prisoners' families destitute.

Feelings = Rights
Under the Children Act, a juvenile sentenced to get a free vacation in Belize has the right to have his sentence carried out and have his "feelings and wishes" considered, a British review panel held.

U.N. Treaty Bans Spanking
Countries that have ratified the 1991 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child must ban spanking, according to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child.

EC Fights Waste
Stale bread is "waste," so the English cannot feed it to swans without $3,000 licenses, the EC decreed. "Nothing surprises us about Brussels any more," said one pro-wildlife group spokesman. Others endorsed a massive bombing campaign to address the underlying causes of the European Community's concerns.

Spain bans Spanish
Making all schools in Catalonia teach only in Catalan, not Spanish, violates the Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Spain's Supreme Tribunal held. It said parents have a right to choose what language their children learn.

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