A French / US research team, who analysed the outcomes of more than 4 million court cases, found that, if you’re a defendant : Having a decision on one’s birthday reduces the sentence by 4 days out of an average total sentence length of 127 days If you’re wondering why a defendant may get more […]
“A Moron in a Hurry” is a formalized legal term used in the UK and Canada and the US. It was first established in a 1978 UK court case : The Morning Star Cooperative Society v Express Newspapers Limited, and subsequently reaffirmed by Alfred Thompson “Tom” Denning, OM, PC, DL (Baron Denning,) [pictured] in the case […]
Studies into possible implications of laughter episodes at the US Supreme Court were initiated in 2005 by Professor Jay D. Wexler (Boston University School of Law) who was the first to calculate the ‘Laughter Episodes Instigated Per Argument Average’ (LEIPAA) from the records of court proceedings. Details here in a 2016 Improbable Article. Then, in 2019, […]
If you have been wondering along the lines of – ‘When was the first haircut case heard by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ?’ The answer could well be : Ferrell v. Dallas Independent School District, 261 F. Supp. 545 (N.D. Tex. 1966) The Ferrell plaintiffs were members of a […]
The mini-cup jelly court cases are no longer quite so far beneath the world’s “attention radar” awareness level. A new study dares to look at, and speak of, them: “The Mini-Cup Jelly Court Cases: A Comparative Analysis from a Food Ethics Perspective,” Suk Shin Kim, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, October 2014, Volume 27, Issue 5, […]
Evidence for the proposition that The Law has a long reach in time and space: “United States of America v. One Tyrannosaurus Bataar Skeleton“. For some background on the case, see “Bones of Contention“, by Paige Williams.
When a judge falls asleep in the courtroom, sometimes people are alert enough to notice – and then word gets out to the public. That’s happened often enough for two doctors to decide to do something. What they did was to gather news reports about slumbering judges, write a paper about those reports, and then […]
Is this the record-holder for most-words-in-a-single-sentence written by a judge in a court document? Written by Senior Judge Thomas J. Aquilino of the US Court of International Trade in a statement handed down on March 31, 2010, the sentence is approximately 540 words long. Here it is: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal […]
Investigator Adiyasa Dwitama alerts us to two news reports about Sudoku puzzles putting people in peril: No sudoku during takeoff and landing! Mistrial due to sudoku?