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(Via Boing Boing)

Spiegel Online reports (January 13th):

bq. Ein Witz hat zwei Männern im US-Bundesstaat New York eine Anzeige eingebracht. Die beiden hatten sich vor einem Gerichtsgebäude über Anwälte lustig gemacht – sehr zum Unmut eines mithörenden Juristen.

bq. Two men in New York State have been reported to the police for telling a joke. They were telling lawyer jokes outside a courthouse, much to the disgust of a listening lawyer.

Harvey Kash and Carl Lanzisera, the founders of Americans for Legal Reform, are said to be defendants in a lawsuit beginning in February. Outside the Long Island court office, Kash asked Lanzisera, ‘How do you know a lawyer is lying?’, and Lanzisera answered, ‘His lips move’. A lawyer in the queue asked them to stop talking, but they continued and he reported them.

It looks as if Spiegel Online, which gives no references or links, has got its facts wrong again. Americans for Legal Reform have a huge van and loudspeaker for telling lawyer jokes outside courthouses and have got into trouble for this before now. The following article appeared in June 2002:

bq. Americans for Legal Reform, in Huntington Station, is among the court’s most visible detractors. The group’s truck, with its 12-foot- high billboard that reads “Stop the Lawyer Disease” is occasionally spotted in the parking lots of Long Island courts.

bq. Some critics call them loudmouths. Members use a bullhorn to spread their accusations against barristers and judges alike with an arsenal of lawyer jokes. One favorite: “What do you say to a lawyer with an IQ of 50? Good morning, Your Honor.”

bq. “The idea is to get under their skin,” said Harvey Kash, a member of the 12-year-old group. “At our meetings we have wall-to-wall people now. There are so many people who have been wounded by the system.”

bq. Americans for Legal Reform has volunteer court watchers, maintains a database that members use to refer people to or steer them away from attorneys, coaches people on filing grievances against attorneys or judges and helps people develop a strategy for dealing with the court and their attorneys.

(Via Jurablogs Blog)

LATER NOTE:

It seems that Spiegel Online did take the report straight from a US source, an AP report:

bq. Men at courthouse cited for disorderly conduct
HEMPSTEAD, New York (AP) — Did you hear the one about the two guys arrested for telling lawyer jokes?
It happened this week to the founders of a group called Americans for Legal Reform, who were waiting in line to get into a Long Island courthouse.
“How do you tell when a lawyer is lying?” Harvey Kash reportedly asked Carl Lanzisera.
“His lips are moving,” they said in unison.
While some waiting to get into the courthouse giggled, a lawyer farther up the line Monday was not laughing.
He told them to pipe down, and when they did not, the lawyer reported the pair to court personnel, who charged them with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor.
“They just can’t take it,” Kash said of lawyers in general. “This violates our First Amendment rights.”
Dan Bagnuola, a spokesman for the Nassau County courts, said the men were “being abusive and they were causing a disturbance.”
He said he did not have the name of the lawyer who complained.
Americans for Legal Reform monitors the courts and uses confrontational tactics to push for greater access for the public.

bq. The pair said that for years they have stood outside courthouses on Long Island and mocked lawyers.
On Monday, however, Kash said he was due in court to answer a drunken driving charge from a year and a half ago. The men are due back in court on the disorderly conduct charge next month.

Well, disorderly conduct is not a very serious offence and it still has more to do with how loud they were talking and whether they were trying to or likely to annoy the rest of those present. (Thanks to the IAFL list for the APA version)

Germany involves laypersons in the criminal justice system in the form of Schöffen. A Schöffe – lay judge, lay assessor – is attached to a particular panel for two years and sits a couple of times a month, as far as I recall. The most serious cases are tried by a panel of three professional judges and two lay judges, and four of them have to agree. That’s only one example of the kinds of panels with lay judges. A new generation of Schöffen are just starting this January.

One of them, Bernd Ramm (64), put an ad in the Berliner Morgenpost on Tuesday announcing he is going to do what he can to ensure punishment and deterrence take precedence over resocialization:

bq. “Die lasche Handhabung der Justizbehörden erweckt bei vielen Menschen den Anschein, als seien die Kriminellen und nicht die Geschädigten die Opfer der Gesellschaft”, sagte Ramm. Als Schöffe wolle er künftig mitwirken, daß bei schweren Verbrechen die Abschreckung und nicht die Resozialisierung in den Blickpunkt der Richter gelange. Als Beispiel nennt der Akademische Direktor an der Berliner Charité in seiner Anzeige die Verurteilung eines Täters zu 18 Monaten Bewährung, nachdem er ein 13 jähriges Mädchen vergewaltigt hatte.

It’s difficult to discuss these things without concrete examples. I don’t know the circumstances of the rape case in question. – We’ll also have to see if Schramm is now allowed to sit. Even if he does sit (February 4th is the first possible date, apparently), lawyers would challenge the court for bias.

From Die Welt via Handakte WebLAWg.

Zompist (Mark Rosenfelder?) says:

bq. In 1855 two Portuguese translators, José da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino, produced an English phrasebook so unbelievably bad that it was reprinted for half a century as a masterpiece of hilarity, under the title English as She is Spoke. Paul Collins of McSweeney’s Books has reprinted a selection from it, and it’s well worth picking up.
I thought it would be interesting to compare Fonseca and Carolino’s translations with Babelfish’s… consider it a test of the capacity of artificial stupidity.

Via the Baldie.

An example (Babelfish did quite well):

bq. Ainda não é tempo delas; mas os damascos brevemente estarão maduros.
It isn’t the season for them; but the apricots will soon be ripe.
ES: It is not the season yet; but here is some peaches what does ripen at the eye sight.
B: Still it is not time of them; but the damson plums briefly will be mature.

Tom Reynolds (not his real name) blogs his life with the London Ambulance Service (or whatever it’s called) in Random Acts of Reality. Yesterday he was interviewed on a Radio Scotland show about his blog, which has about 5,000 readers: a good interview about an addictive blog.

Tom’s entries on the radio show: before and after.
A link to the relevant part of the programme – this will expire next Monday when the programme is replaced online by the next one.

You can hear the presenter, Gary Robertson’s, Scottish accent and Tom’s London one very nicely at the beginning. And the villain Bob, surely an actor employed to criticize the blog, has an upper-class English accent (which doesn’t mean he isn’t Scottish born and bred – the public school set don’t usually have a Scots accent, or used not to). The other two speakers also sound English, but not so much like the Queen.

Die Zisterzienser-Mönche von der Insel Caldey vor der walisischen Küste schweigen meistens, doch haben sie ihr Schweigen unterbrochen (es ist in dringenden Fällen erlaubt) um sich in einem Rechtsstreit um ungerechtfertigte Entlassung zu verteidigen. (Ihr Online-Shop verkauft u.a. Lavendelwasser über Manufactum).

The monks of Caldey Island have broken their silence to defend themselves against an action for unfair dismissal (Independent article only available for payment; Telegraph; blogger’s visit).

bq. An order of Cistercian monks in a remote island community broke their vow of silence yesterday to deny claims that they had unfairly dismissed a couple who had worked for them for 22 years.

bq. One of the reasons that 60- year-old Andrew McHardy was sacked, they insisted, was that he had a drink problem. The monks said they were in an ideal position to know – two of them were former members of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Anonymous and silent? At all events, they make perfume and chocolate rather than alcohol.

bq. Under cross-examination from John Bradbury, a solicitor from the Haverfordwest Citizens’ Advice Bureau, Bro O’Brien agreed Mr and Mrs McHardy had not been given a written contract.

Presumably they didn’t even get an oral one.

But apparently it isn’t really a vow of silence, just a vow to speak only when necessary (this would probably amount to the same thing in my case).