I have been playing around with how to communicate legal concepts via video. After getting over my nervousness about actually seeing my face on things, I think I’m getting happier and happier with these.
Enjoy my quick explainer of the law underlying the question of whether the ABC identified the Attorney-General even though it didn’t name him, a quick discussion of a difference between US defamation law and Australian defamation law, a quick discussion of why the Federal Court is involved and why that might be a problem, and the social media habit of sledging lawyers based on their past clients.
The reaction so far has been surprisingly positive, and has resulted in people asking questions about other aspects of the case (like how the truth defence works), so I might do another in this sequence.
And a shout out to Dr Joe McIntyre from the University of South Australia who wants to beef up the problem of the Federal Court perception. The version covered in this video was the far more common version presented on social media (but argued at its highest so that it wasn’t a mere strawman). As McIntyre points out on Twitter, there’s a way to construct the problem so that it’s not about actual or perceived bias in this present case, but instead so that it is about perceived bias in the system overall: if, say, Jagot J presides over this case and find in his favour and then–for extremely good reasons as she is an eminent and excellent judge–is appointed to the High Court next year, won’t the public reasonably perceive that there is preferential treatment here? I think there’s an answer to this, but it draws upon theories of courts more broadly…
Only The Sangfroid 