Recent blog review uptil 4 December 2011
This has been a very interesting week for bloggers in the world of LegalAware. The legal blogs have been a useful gateway for me discovering what is happening in specialised areas of the law, such as @lawandsexuality’s blogpost featuring a call for academic papers in law, gender and sexuality. At roughly the same time as I had been to a conference on outcomes-focused regulation organised by @InfoPlanPR and others, which I reported on this blog and where I had been told Tesco law did not exist, @johnaflood reported on the expansion of Tesco law in Ireland.
I feel that it is important to keep an eye on what is happening in society, for the legal world to react to it and to be a part of it. In a powerful post, @PrincessofVP articulated her impressions of suicide, including the motivations of people who wish to commit suicide. Occasionally, these worlds converge, and @Charonqc recorded a very noteworthy podcast with the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, on assisted dying and his amendment to the Suicide Act which had been defeated in the Lords, and secondly his thoughts on the reasoning behind establishing a new Supreme Court and the direct it may, in time, take.
Lawyers need above all need to be sensitive to the world around them. For example, #occupyLSX has been an issue close-to-my-mind, not in fact because of the anti-capitalist sentiments, but because it makes my journey from NW1 to EC3 a complete nightmare. @legalacademia has recently conducted an interview with an activist involved in ‘Occupy Cardiff’. The highlight for the week for me was @LegalBizzle who recently made a number of striking observations in his blogpost entitled, “My wife is a parasite”. In a post which I liked immensely, LegalBizzle makes the point that these actions are disruptive and in the self-interest of public sector stakeholders, arguably, but these actions most importantly are lawful. LegalBizzle critically argues against chucking abusive terms at public sector workers. It’s incredibly easy to be whipped up into a frenzy, but, in what I thought was also a brilliant blogpost, @_millymoo reviews a number of recent events in the media and cautions against a hasty reaction.
I feel this every week in fact; that the English law has to deal with some of the most complicated issues that can possibly be thrown at it. For example, Carl Gardner has recently reviewed the issue of a ‘right to respond’ by people who might suffer reputation damage at the hands of the media in a blogpost which had made reference to Alastair Campbell’s (@campbellclaret) recent evidence at the Leveson inquiry. There is, of course, a fine line between defamation and freedom of expression, but @PaulBernalUK recently offered an excellent perspective on the conflict between expression and privacy, in relation to Julian Assange amongst others, in a blogpost entitled “Heroes and villains”. Dealing with the public is an occupational hazard of being a lawyer, whatever field you’re in, and @MagicCircleMinx proposed that lawyers are like lemons in a recent blog offering. Arguably, also, lawyers should listen to other lawyers, as indeed @OccupytheInns proposed in a somewhat controversial proposal on the up-and-coming Legal Cheek blog, in an article entitled “Milionnaire lawyers should fund pupillages”.
