Two new federal magistrates, Kevin Lapthorn and Keith Slack, and a part-time senior member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Andre Sweidan, have been appointed by Attorney-General Philip Ruddock.

In addition, Richard notes that there were two new County Court appointments announced in Melbourne today.  Read more »

'Access to justice in NSW is in serious decline because of the state's lumbering and archaic court system, according to the NSW Law Society.'

Originally by CCH Australia, 2:44 PM

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John Roberts may hold extreme states' rights views, the kind that could sharply limit Congress's power to protect ordinary Americans.

Originally by NYT > Opinion, 9:00 PM

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According to ABC News, 'Queensland has reached a financial and employment settlement with former chief magistrate Di Fingleton.'

Ms Fingleton had been seeking compensation and/or her old job back after the High Court found she was wrongly jailed for retaliating against a witness.

Queensland Attorney-General Linda Lavarch has announced the Government will make an ex-gratia payment of $475 000 to Ms Fingleton.  Read more »

Labor’s justice spokeswoman Nicola Roxon says the government should look beyond the usual narrow confines which dictate appointments to Australia’s highest court when it replaces Justice Michael McHugh later this year.

Originally by CCH Australia, 12:58 AM

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'Election-law superblogger Rick Hasen has a very interesting post on the question whether the next nominee for the Supreme Court -- the replacement for Justice O'Connor -- will provoke a "nuclear showdown". By "nuclear showdown", Rick means a filibuster by Senate Democrats that provokes the so-called "nuclear option", ie the use of a parliamentary maneuver to amend the Senate Rules and amend the cloture rules for judicial nominations.'

Originally by Legal Theory Blog, 12:21 PM  Read more »

The Honourable Justice Susan Crennan, previously a justice of the Federal Court of Australia, has been appointed to the High Court by Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock. Justice Crennan, aged 60, can serve for up to ten years, and will replace McHugh J who is due to retire in November.  Read more »

Split decisions are nearly inevitable in the [United States] Supreme Court.

Originally by NYT > Opinion, 9:27 PM

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DaveM writes "Bush's most recent Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers, successfully argued that people who were sold defective software by Microsoft weren't "injured," and couldn't participate in a class action against the company. The case involved unstable compression features in MS DOS 6.0, which were corrected by a $9.95 update, MS DOS 6.2. Plaintiffs wanted Microsoft to offer the updates for free, but eventually lost to Miers' arguments."

Originally by CmdrTaco at Slashdot: Your Rights Online, 9:55 PM  Read more »

The Sydney Morning Herald has published a fascinating review of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, with reference to the number of their decisions subsequently overturned by the High Court of Australia:  Read more »

According to this article on CNET News, ‘The Xhibit (‘eXchanging Hearing Information By Internet Technology’) system, now rolled out to 50 Crown courts in England and Wales, allows court clerks to update information about hearings as they happen.

The system enables police, prosecutors and witness groups to get case details in minutes rather than days. Updates can be received by text email or pager, and the public can follow court hearings online or via public display screens in court. …  Read more »

Supreme Court Justice Robert Redlich has been appointed to the Court of Appeal and Anthony Cavanough QC is a Judge of the Supreme Court.

Originally by CCH Australia, 10:55 AM

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According to a report in The Age online, Justice Kiefel of the Federal Court of Australia has been appointed as successor to Mr Justice Callinan, who must retire by 31 August 2007.  Read more »

These somewhat didactic — but on the whole reasonable — ‘order preparation guidelines’ were recently issued by Judge Robert Kressel of the United States District Court to solicitors responsible for preparing draft orders in bankruptcy proceedings. Given the ardency with which most lawyers defend their grammatical and syntactic convictions, the controversy sparked by the practice note is unsurprising.

The guidelines range from the infantile:

Guideline No 17 — Its and It’s
Please use the possessive noun “its” and the contraction “it’s” correctly.

…to the highly idiosyncratic:

Guideline No 3 — The Date
Please put a place for the date on the left side below the text. Do not put a month or year, simply put the word “Dated:” I use an electronic stamp to insert the date, so putting any part of the date is simply an inconvenience and an interference. The traditional line used to put the date is also unnecessary.  Read more »

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