Lawyers, why are you allowed to contradict yourself?

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expipi

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#258584 11-Oct-2019 08:22

I was just reading on the BBC (sorry, I can't post links www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-49995133):

"On Wednesday, Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom suggested the PM was gearing up to bypass legal obstacles to a no-deal Brexit by sending one letter requesting an extension and, in the same instance, submitting a second memo telling European leaders he does not want one."

How is this possible?! Years ago I remember reading in Glanville William's Learning the Law about some kid breaking the schoolroom window who was allowed to say in his defence, "In the first place, sir, the schoolroom has no window; in the second place, the schoolroom window is not broken; in the third place, if it is broken, I did not do it; in the fourth place, it was an accident."

But presumably these are like fallback positions, in real life does anyone actually encounter people taking this kind of doublethink seriously? How would a lawyer be supposed to handle a request like Johnson's?

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#2335351 11-Oct-2019 08:33

How would a lawyer be supposed to handle a request like Johnson's?

By charging a lot of billable hours. I imagine it's something like Douglas Adams' definition of intelligence.

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GV27

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#2335356 11-Oct-2019 08:37

He's legally required to ask for an extension. That's it. If they didn't want him to send something to the contrary until he heard back they should have written it into the law they passed. They didn't.

eracode

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#2335365 11-Oct-2019 08:57

GV27:

He's legally required to ask for an extension. That's it. If they didn't want him to send something to the contrary until he heard back they should have written it into the law they passed. They didn't.

Yep. Right from the mechanics of the referendum, Brexit has been a litany of ineptitude. The only exception to this is Boris. It’s fascinating to watch him in action.

Sometimes I just sit and think. Other times I just sit.

expipi

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#2335396 11-Oct-2019 09:59

Except you would think at least for the duration of a day a prime minister has a duty to be consistent in his view (in spirit, not just literally). Taxpayers have a duty of consistency - except I remember a couple of years ago here in NZ the Court of Appeal finally said the Commissioner of Inland Revenue didn't have a duty to be consistent in treatment of taxpayers (Michael Hill vs CIR).

I think the higher up you go the more you need to perfect this tightrope walking with eyes open and shut at the same time; I just read this by a sport psychologist,

In order to make the sacrifices necessary to reach world class levels of performance, an athlete has to believe that performing well means everything. They have to cleave to the belief that winning Olympic gold is of life changing significance. But it’s just that belief that is most likely to trigger a choking response. So the key psychological skill is to ditch that belief in the minutes before competition and to replace it with the belief that the race does not really matter. It is a form of psychological manipulation and it takes a lot of work.

SaltyNZ

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#2335412 11-Oct-2019 10:27

expipi: Except you would think at least for the duration of a day a prime minister has a duty to be consistent in his view (in spirit, not just literally).

If you do think that, then I have a bridge to sell you. It is not illegal for a politician to lie. No, I don't like it either. But to expect anything other than obfuscation, prevarication, and outright falsehoods from politicians is to live in a fantasy world.

Democracy is not a process for selecting those most fit to lead the people. It's a popularity contest, and honest, humble people don't win popularity contests as a general rule. There are exceptions, of course, but that's what they are: exceptions. And even the exceptions will disappoint.

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frankv

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#2335477 11-Oct-2019 11:24

eracode:

Yep. Right from the mechanics of the referendum, Brexit has been a litany of ineptitude. The only exception to this is Boris. It’s fascinating to watch him in action.

I don't see any exception. All I see is failed, illegal, unethical attempts at bypassing the system.

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#2335521 11-Oct-2019 13:11

law is very weird.

there was this person i know, her lawyer said the contract she has means she can pull out, no problem, worded favourably to her advantage. but another lawyer said no there is no chance she can pull it, not possible, the wording means squat as the test is in the courts and the courts etc etc etc have always decided bla bla bla and therefore the contract is not what she thinks it says but rather something else tested by the courts.

Involuntary autocorrect in operation on mobile device. Apologies in advance.

GV27

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#2335526 11-Oct-2019 13:22

You overlook the fact that Boris was chosen by his party to deliver Brexit on a platform of leaving on 31 October, 2019, deal or no deal.

People seem upset he is doing what he promised to do. Trying to hold him so vague ethical interpretations what you think laws should mean as opposed to what they do mean is overlooking the way the opposition have carried on (prattling on about democracy while knocking back attempts to hold a snap election because they are electoral poison and know they would be out of a job). If you're going to hold Johnson to that level of scrutiny, then you're not going to like your alternatives - unless it's one of those morals of convenience deals where people don't actually care.

gzt

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#2335600 11-Oct-2019 14:57

expipi: I was just reading on the BBC (sorry, I can't post links www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-499"On Wednesday, Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom suggested the PM was gearing up to bypass legal obstacles to a no-deal Brexit by sending one letter requesting an extension and, in the same instance, submitting a second memo telling European leaders he does not want one."

Essentially it's a dare. He's smart enough to know this could be challenged in court. As was his previous unconventional and as it turned out unconstitutional attempt to close the parliament. Just depends if anyone wants to challenge in court or not.

frankv

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#2335626 11-Oct-2019 15:24

GV27:

You overlook the fact that Boris was chosen by his party to deliver Brexit on a platform of leaving on 31 October, 2019, deal or no deal.

People seem upset he is doing what he promised to do. Trying to hold him so vague ethical interpretations what you think laws should mean as opposed to what they do mean

I really don't care whether he takes the UK out of the EU or not, except that as you say that was what he was elected do.

But the UK Supreme Court agrees with me that he shouldn't lie to the Queen about trying to stifle dissent by proroguing Parliament.

is overlooking the way the opposition have carried on (prattling on about democracy while knocking back attempts to hold a snap election because they are electoral poison and know they would be out of a job).

Actually, the snap election was a tactic to prevent scrutiny of his actions and decisions by Parliament. Which is, after all, the purpose of HM Loyal Opposition.

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#2335632 11-Oct-2019 15:31

to complete your train of thought there - because the election would have occured after Brexit instead of before. Which is one reason why parliament passed a law saying get an extension to make election before Brexit a possibility..

Fred99

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#2335648 11-Oct-2019 15:58

I won a tender for a big project in Sydney years ago. At post tender meeting before signing off, the client asked me for an additional guarantee that went beyond what we wanted to provide. So the company I worked for got our lawyers to write a generic guarantee that looked good but wasn't worth the paper it was written on. I presented it to the client who said it looked great - but he wanted to run it past their lawyers. So he calls me back to his office to tell me that his lawyer said it wasn't worth the paper it was written on. In desperation I suggested that we arrange a meeting with both lawyers to nut out discrepancies. Sure he says, then gives the name of his law firm - the same firm we'd used to draft a dodgy document had exposed the same document as dodgy. I walked away from that contract and decided to change jobs ASAP - being sprung when deliberately using lawyers in attempt to con people was the problem - not in that case lawyers following instructions from their client(s) to the letter.

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#2335691 11-Oct-2019 16:43

Fred99:

I won a tender for a big project in Sydney years ago. At post tender meeting before signing off, the client asked me for an additional guarantee that went beyond what we wanted to provide. So the company I worked for got our lawyers to write a generic guarantee that looked good but wasn't worth the paper it was written on. I presented it to the client who said it looked great - but he wanted to run it past their lawyers. So he calls me back to his office to tell me that his lawyer said it wasn't worth the paper it was written on. In desperation I suggested that we arrange a meeting with both lawyers to nut out discrepancies. Sure he says, then gives the name of his law firm - the same firm we'd used to draft a dodgy document had exposed the same document as dodgy. I walked away from that contract and decided to change jobs ASAP - being sprung when deliberately using lawyers in attempt to con people was the problem - not in that case lawyers following instructions from their client(s) to the letter.

Just imagine they didn't give you the name of the firm and the meeting was arranged and everybody shows up ...

Involuntary autocorrect in operation on mobile device. Apologies in advance.

allio

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#2337194 15-Oct-2019 09:27

The specific Boris example is a weird move that I don't entirely understand. But speaking more generally, and specifically legally, it's entirely standard practice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_in_the_alternative

A defendant in a criminal trial is allowed to present multiple contradictory defences simultaneously:

I didn't kill him at all
If I did kill him, it was in self-defence
If I did kill him, and it wasn't in self-defence, I wasn't of sound mind

To a layperson it seems crazy that you could argue these contradictory things simultaneously, but the system would be grossly unfair if you couldn't. A genuinely innocent person being accused of a murder that plainly appeared to be in self-defence would be faced with an impossible choice: either plead your innocence, and give up on any number of viable defences that might exonerate you or reduce your sentence, or make a false admission of guilt to access those defences because you calculate they had a higher chance of being successful.

In such a case the judge would very clearly explain to the jurors that they couldn't use the defendant's "if I did kill him" arguments against him.

Kyanar

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#2337437 15-Oct-2019 14:33

It's called the Four Dog Defense. It's been used for years by the tobacco industry, and climate change deniers.

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