tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58241312011-11-28T02:13:14.928+11:00Round ObjectsEthics, public choice theory, electoral systems, and constitutional, administrative and international law (mainly with an Australian perspective).
(This blog was formerly named "Daily Constitutional", til I found that name <a href="http://itneededtobesaid.blogspot.com/"> was already taken</a>.)Tom Rnoreply@blogger.comBlogger171100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-30780351433789732952011-05-18T16:54:00.002+11:002011-05-18T17:01:19.601+11:00Conservatives against entrenchmentTalking political rather than legal entrenchment, of course:
(1) Liam Fox:
[UK] Defence Secretary Liam Fox has challenged a plan to enshrine in law the
UK's promise to spend 0.7% of its gross national income on overseas aid. In a
letter leaked to the Times, Dr Fox says he "cannot support the proposal in its
current form". A source close to Dr Fox said the issue was not the level of the
Tom Rnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-60100602883817984122010-07-18T23:08:00.006+11:002010-07-18T23:13:16.847+11:00Although normally the singular includes the plural...... and vice versa, it does not apply in this case: I am not, as far as I know, related to South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds. He is presumably from the distant Latvian, Flemish or gangsta branches of my clan. This guy, on the other hand, is either the assistant editor of Moonraker, Superman II and Krull or else, IIRC (Google's no help) a British writer on military news for Jane's Defence Weekly:
Tom Rnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-87923283214437988452010-05-12T14:16:00.003+11:002010-05-26T12:11:26.724+11:00The Constitution of Fiume (no, wait, come back! This is interesting!)Found this quite by accident on Wikipedia while trawling the Wikisource list of Constitutions:
A constitution drafted, for the short-lived Republic of Fiume (in northern Italy when founded in 1920; now in Croatia), by the poet and adventurer Gabriele d'Annunzio . Unlike certain other short-lived republics established in northern Italy during tumultuous post-war years, Fiume actually seems like aTom Rnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-14897377943124430292008-10-09T12:11:00.006+11:002008-10-11T09:19:17.699+11:00"The One" versus "That One" Is it "the one" or "that one"? It depends on John McCain's mood. The Republican apparently believes both designations are equally appropriate for his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama. In an exchange on energy in Tuesday night's debate, McCain referred to Obama as "that one". The Democrats immediately claimed the comment as evidence of his disdain for Obama. In the spin alley after the debate, Tom Rnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-52268206533002369332008-10-08T08:32:00.001+11:002008-10-08T07:49:56.170+11:00Paging Lani GuinierIraqi Parliament repeals a law reserving seats for ethnic and/or religious minorities - mainly Christians, but also Shabeks and Yazidis (what, no sympathy for the Devil in Baghdad?) - which prompts conservative American Christians to realise that "quotas" is, perhaps, not semper et ubique a horror word.Tom Rnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-85586936871227437962008-02-11T14:46:00.002+11:002010-07-18T23:20:57.993+11:00Goldberg, Steyn on US electoral systemTwo recent comments by conservative pundits Jonah Goldberg and Mark Steyn, both at National Review Online's "The Corner", warrant some dissection.
First, Jonah Goldberg wrote:
"... Voter turnout fetishization has been one of my oldest hobbyhorses... I like this email from a reader:
'Before the hate mail starts pouring in, I just wanted to let you know that I've always agreed with you on Tom Rnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-52429471945749759572008-02-10T23:28:00.007+11:002008-05-14T15:30:14.940+11:00The wilder shores of Triple-EUPDATE: Some slight amendments. Thanks to Alan for a perceptive comment (indeed, more perceptive by far than any other comment ever made upon this post) that "The Canadian [S]enate is the standard-issue British colonial upper house of its time." True, but federalism wasn't standard-issue for British colonies, and what is true of an upper chamber in a single colony ("unitary", other than loose Tom Rnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-35803853814976748022007-06-08T12:13:00.001+11:002008-02-08T14:48:14.317+11:00Orin Kerr on "Studying Engineering versus Studying Law"I enrolled in law school after engineering graduate school, and people occasionally ask me if I have advice for engineering graduates planning to study law. ... I tend to think engineering education provides a pretty good background for law school, but that there are some pitfalls to keep in mind. Engineers tend to have two possible advantages over other entering law students. First, engineers Tom Rnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-1160632777551424482006-10-12T16:58:00.000+11:002006-10-12T16:59:57.350+11:00Spoken in a Darth Vader voice..."... You diss Obeid for the last time!..."Tom Rnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-1144580838972999862006-04-09T22:05:00.000+11:002006-08-22T07:22:58.476+11:00Australian Electoral System 101Recently I was emailed by a US attorney seeking some information about Australia's electoral laws. My brief "for dummies" may be of interest to some, desperate high-school senior in Iowa with a term paper due tomorrow...
In Australia, federal electoral boundaries (for the House of Reps: the Senate is elected by Single Transferable Vote PR statewide) are determined solely by federal law, while Tom Rnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-1100568808169982892006-02-13T01:00:00.003+11:002010-09-29T14:50:21.227+11:00Term limits for appointed judges? [updated][First posted: 16 November 2004. Updated: 7 March 2006, 13 May 2010.]
UPDATE: More interest sparked by President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan. See here, here, here and here.
UPDATE: Some recent resurgence of interest in this topic: see
Teitelbaum, Joshua C, "Age, Tenure and Productivity of the US Supreme Court: Are Term Limits Necessary?" Florida State University Law Review (forthcoming).Tom Rnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-1122271100561027412005-07-25T16:52:00.000+11:002005-07-25T17:15:59.953+11:00What Would Life Be Like Without A Bill of Rights?To answer Nat Hentoff's anguished question, compare US with Australian case law regarding police powers of custodial arrest for offences punishable with fines only:
Atwater v City of Lago Vista, 532 US 318 (2001)
and:
Hedgepeth v Washington [DC] Metro Area Transit, 284 Fed Supp 2d 145, 149 (DDC 2003).
with:
DPP v Carr (2002) 127 A Crim R 151.Tom Rnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-1116996612187257852005-05-25T15:35:00.000+11:002005-05-26T12:12:25.393+11:00"Extraordinary and reprehensible circumstances", or will just plain "extraordinary" do?Opposition party pledges not to use its Senate numbers to block executive government's proposals, except in "extraordinary circumstances".
Sound familiar?
What's really unsettling is: this comes just one week after Canada re-enacted the soap opera of Australia's 1997 Cheryl Kernot defection. May all the Lords of Kobol preserve us from some other democracy next week or the week after emulating Tom Rnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-1105422518515889582005-01-14T09:30:00.004+11:002010-09-26T16:05:34.493+11:00Numbers games: anti-STV ignorance in the Toronto Globe and MailYes, okay, I am a known shill for Single Transferable Vote (STV), but I acknowledge that there are reasonable arguments against that particular electoral system. The following screed, however, is not one of them, if the first paragraph is any guide. The full article is locked off for paying subscribers only. But if the other parags are as demonstrably ignorant as the teaser, I wouldn't recommend Tom Rnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-1097799987881582022004-10-15T11:25:00.000+11:002004-10-15T14:29:00.233+11:00It all depends what the meaning of "trust" is...Interesting discussion at the Imagining Australia weblog, where Andrew Leigh's reprinted, with permission, an Australian Financial Review op-ed by David Burchell (Senior Lecturer in Humanities at the University of Western Sydney), including this insight:
"Too many people imagine ‘trust’ in politics to be some kind of blood-pact beteen the people and their leaders, like a Tom Rnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-1097546949236180302004-10-12T13:05:00.000+11:002005-07-05T15:26:46.806+11:00Cited by the High CourtIn early September 2004, I found out I've been cited by the High Court. First time, as far as I can tell. It's in Mulholland v Australian Electoral Commission [2004] HCA 41 (8 September 2004), per Kirby J's footnote 348 to paragraph 265.
On some previous occasions, I'd idly run a search through AUSTLII looking for my own name, but it only picks up the 100,000 instances of “around/ ground/ Tom Rnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5824131.post-1063800273888900562003-09-17T23:04:00.000+11:002008-02-11T12:11:11.216+11:00WelcomeWelcome to THE DAILY CONSTITUTIONAL, where I'll be blogging at intervals on some of my favourite topics -- ethics, public choice theory, electoral systems, and constitutional, administrative and international law (mainly with an Australian perspective).
Who's this?
Tom Round: since June 2004, an Associate Lecturer in the School of Law & Justice, Southern Cross University, Lismore, northern New Tom Rnoreply@blogger.com