Justice Benjamin Cardozo, the celebrated Judge of the US Supreme Court, wrote in his book ‘The Nature of the Judicial Process’ :
” A Judge is not a Knight Errant roaming at will in search of his own ideal of beauty and goodness ”. I submit with respect that the recent release of a 30 page handbook by the Chief Justice of India for guiding judges to avoid using gender stereotypes is violative of the above dictum of Justice Cardozo.
If a 30 page handbook is needed for combating gender stereotypes, why not issue a 30 page handbook for combating stereotypes of politicians ? Can they be called crooks in a court order ( which many people think most of them are ) ?
Why not a 30 page handbook for guiding Supreme Court judges as to what words they should use for High Court judges ( e.g. should the Supreme Court in its judgment call the High Court as ‘the Court below’ ? ). And what words should the High Court judges use for subordinate judiciary judges ?
What about 30 page handbooks for civil servants, teachers, lawyers, engineers, farmers, workers, students, doctors etc ?
I submit that judges learn judicial etiquette and most things not from handbooks but by observing court conventions while practising as a lawyer, and as a junior judge from one’s seniors.
It is a long standing, well established, convention that judges should only speak through their judgments, and that is what I was taught by my seniors in the judiciary e.g. former CJI MN Venkatachaliah and former CJI J.S. Verma. Sermons and homilies delivered in 30 page handbooks are not part of a judgment, and are therefore best avoided.
Mumbai: Actress Adah Sharma has shared that her upcoming film ‘The Kerala Story’ has not shown Kerala in a “derogatory light”.
Adah took to Twitter, where she shared a selfie of herself in a pink saree with gajra in her hair.
She said: “Many senior persons in high posts have commented on #TheKeralaStory after watching the 2 minute trailer.”
“My parents have always asked me to respect my elders so with due respect to all of them i hope they can take 2 hrs out of their busy schedule and watch the movie. I’m sure they will see that we haven’t shown Kerala in any derogatory light. Jai hind.”
In ‘The Kerala Story’, actress Adah Sharma is playing the role of Fathima Ba, a Hindu Malayali nurse, who is among the 32,000 women who went missing from Kerala and were then recruited to the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) after being forced to convert to Islam.
Directed by Sudipto Sen, the film tells the story of four women and how from being regular college students in Kerala, they became part of a terror organisation.
The film has courted controversy for portraying itself as a real story and for making false claims that thousands of women from Kerala are being converted to Islam and recruited into ISIS. It faces allegations of promoting the Sangh Parivar’s agenda.
Jock Zonfrillo, a renowned chef and a judge on the popular TV show MasterChef Australia, has died at the age of 46. His family confirmed the news of his passing in a statement, describing him as “our irreplaceable husband, father, brother, son, and friend”. The cause of his death is unknown, but it is not being treated as suspicious by the Victoria Police. A report on his death will be prepared by the coroner’s office.
Following Mr. Zonfrillo’s death, the new season of MasterChef Australia was canceled, according to Network 10. The chef’s family expressed their sorrow and devastation in a statement, saying that they were “completely shattered” and overwhelmed.
Born in Glasgow in 1976, Mr. Zonfrillo began working in kitchens at the age of 12. By the age of 15, he had become the youngest-ever apprentice at the luxury Scottish resort, The Turnberry Hotel. He later worked for Michelin-starred chef Marco Pierre White before moving to Australia in the 1990s, where he opened several successful restaurants, including his most acclaimed eatery Orana in 2013.
In his 2021 memoir, The Last Shot, Mr. Zonfrillo wrote about his addiction to heroin, which he overcame to build his successful career as a chef. He is survived by his wife and four children.
My housemate and best friendspends every waking minute on TikTok
I’ve known Marley for about seven years and she’s always been quite reliant on her phone as she works in social media, but she’s now seriously addicted to it, even after she’s clocked off.
If she puts it down for 10 minutes she gets agitated. I hid her phone once to see how long it would take before she flipped and she couldn’t hack it for more than two minutes. She was like “Where is it?!” It was like watching a smoker cluck for their next fag.
We moved in together in 2020 just before the pandemic, and that’s when I really noticed how bad her phone addiction was. Marley never has the phone out of her hand and she constantly scrolls when we are watching TV or having a conversation. I find it a bit rude. It’s also annoying when you’re trying to concentrate on a TV programme and she’s got her phone on full volume, watching reels.
When she’s working from home at the same time as me, I can hear her videos from the next room. I get disturbed by these weird songs on repeat, and she constantly quotes trending videos. When there was a viral video about a boy eating corn a while back, she’d just randomly burst into song, singing “It’s corn! A big lump with knobs” around the flat about 50 times a day.
Marley will look up literally everything on TikTok. We got a new coffee maker recently and she spent four hours researching people’s video reviews before deciding on which brand to get. I was fine with just reading some Amazon reviews. I asked to see her screen time the other day. I couldn’t actually believe it when it said 12 hours – aday. I told her she’s going to get square eyes, but she just laughed. Actually, her eyesight isn’t great, and I wonder if this is making it worse.
Marley needs to ease off on the phone usage for her own good, but she could also stop blasting videos around the house when I’m trying to watch TV or have a chat. I can deal with a bit of singing but I’m not on TikTok myself so I can’t really relate.
The defence: Marley
My job means I have to be on the ball with what’s trending online
My phone is permanently glued to my hand, I agree with James there. But I don’t think it’s got much to do with him. If I want to make myself blind by spending nine hours a day on TikTok, so what? He should just let me.
I don’t go around blasting videos at full volume all the time; I think that’s only happened a handful of times. When James asks me to turn something down when he’s watching the telly, I oblige. And I’m not socially inept – I don’t watch things when someone is talking to me. He’s exaggerating there.
But yes, I was shocked when James checked and saw that I was using my phone for 12 hours a day. That’s not normal though. I checked and this month my usage is down to about seven hours a day, which I think is quite good seeing as I work in ads and socials for a big company. My job means I have to be on the ball with what’s trending online. I literally get paid to research these things.
Sometimes I get sucked into the musicality of a viral video. CornTok was great. This kid went viral talking about how delicious sweetcorn is and someone remixed it into a catchy track, which took over TikTok. It was stuck in my head for weeks and I was singing it loads. I showed James the video, but I don’t think he found it funny.
James and I work different hours so he’s really not aware of the full extent of my phone habits. He’s rarely in the house when I’m working, and this insinuation that he can hear me blasting videos from my room is far-fetched. I think he’s jealous because I get to do this as part of my career, and he’s got a rather boring job in accounting.
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I generally think TikTok is great and I’d be so upset if it got banned. It’s great for finding out about new places when travelling, for product reviews from real people, and for entertainment. I’ve lost countless hours to the app, but I don’t mind. I probably won’t ever detox – and I don’t think I need to. I’m also happy to make James a TikTok account too – if he’s up for it.
The jury of Guardian readers
Should Marley give TikTok a rest?
James sees Marley as his best mate, but it’s telling that not a single thing she says indicates she sees him in the same way. Marley needs to put her phone down, live in the moment and think less about her social media presence. She is guilty of not valuing a good and honest friend because she thinks a better life beckons on TikTok. Stewart, 62
As a fellow phone addict, I do have sympathy for Marley. However, it’s more than a little rude to have the sound turned on while watching TV together. And given how thin most flat walls are, it seems like headphones are called for too. Peter, 37
The excessive use of antisocial media is a crime and an erosion of social values. Marley needs to get a grip on the social aspects of cohabitation. However, the two of them are not in a relationship so her life is her own. Steve, 64
Marley is clearly addicted to TikTok, but if she wants her brain to turn to corn that is her choice. If James can’t hack it, he should move out. People behave quite differently in their own home; I’m sure that if James and Marley were socialising as friends, not flatmates, she would engage with him more. Margo, 30
While it sounds like Marley has a fairly serious addiction, ultimately it is up to her how she chooses to use her time. On the plus side, it makes gift ideas easy for her birthday. Do corn-shaped headphones exist? Maybe there will be a new trend by then Rob, 29
Now you be the judge
In our online poll below, tell us: should Marley get off Tiktok and get a life?
The poll will close on Thursday 4 May, 10AM BST
Last week’s result
Last week we asked: should Amaan let Bree have the air-con on in the car?
92% of you said yes – Amaan is guilty
8% of you said no – Amaan is innocent
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
SRINAGAR: The central government has notified the transfer of Justice Atul Sreedharan from Madhya Pradesh High Court to Jammu & Kashmir High Court.
Union Minister for Law & Justice Kiren Rijju announced the development through a tweet. With this development, the number of High Court judges in J&K High Court has reached 16.
On March28, 2023, the Supreme Court collegium has recommended that Justice Atul Sreedharan be transferred from MP High Court to J&K. Justice Atul Sreedharan has sought his transfer on the grounds that his elder daughter would enter practice next year and would be appearing before the District Court and the Indore Bench of the High Court.
“Justice Atul Sreedharan has stated that he does not desire to continue in the High Court of Madhya Pradesh when his daughter enters practice,” reads the collegium resolution.
“The collegium has resolved to accept the request of Mr Justice Atul Sreedharan and to recommend that he be transferred, in the interest of better administration of justice, to the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh,” it further states.
On Wednesday morning, Trump posted on his social media site, Truth Social, about the lawsuit. He called Carroll’s lawyer a “political operative” and said her legal defense is “financed by a big political donor that they said didn’t exist.” He attacked Carroll directly, calling her “Ms. Bergdorf Goodman” and saying she was “like a different person” during a CNN interview.
“This is a fraudulent & false story–Witch Hunt!” he wrote.
Trump also alluded to a dress that Carroll says she was wearing on the day of the alleged rape. After filing her lawsuit, Carroll’s lawyers sought a DNA sample from Trump so they could compare it with DNA found on the dress. Trump initially refused but later changed tactics, offering to provide a sample if Carroll’s legal team turned over the full DNA report on the dress. Kaplan rejected that proposal earlier this year.
Before the jury entered the courtroom on Wednesday, a lawyer for Carroll notified Kaplan of Trump’s comments. In response, Kaplan warned Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina that Trump’s statement was “entirely inappropriate.”
“What seems to be the case is that your client is basically endeavoring, certainly, to speak to his quote unquote public, but more troublesome, to the jury in this case,” Kaplan said.
Before the trial began, Kaplan barred both sides from “any testimony, argument, commentary or reference concerning DNA evidence.”
“Here’s all I can tell you: I will speak to my client and ask him to refrain from any further posts regarding this case,” Tacopina told the judge. Seemingly acknowledging the difficulty of restraining the former president, Tacopina added: “I will do the best I can do, your honor. That’s all I can say.”
Trump, who isn’t required to attend the trial, hasn’t appeared in the courtroom.
The judge then warned Tacopina that Trump could expose himself to greater culpability if he continued to make statements related to the case.
“We’re getting into an area, conceivably, where your client may or may not be tampering with a new source of potential liability,” Kaplan said, adding: “and I think you know what I mean.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Lizza, the veteran political reporter who authored the article, joined POLITICO in 2019 as Chief Washington Correspondent and a co-author of POLITICO Playbook.
In the 101-page opinion issued Tuesday, Williams said evidence developed during the litigation showed that the farm employed numerous workers who provided names and Social Security numbers that did not match Social Security Administration records.
“This Court ordered the SSA to verify the SSNs of all disclosed NuStar Farms employees,” Williams said. “Of those employees who NuStar plaintiffs employed on or before September 30, 2018, 243 of 319 employees’ names, dates of birth, and SSNs did not match SSA records.”
Williams also said there was testimony and evidence that the farm was warned about such mismatches, accepted expired credentials and did not properly complete forms designed to verify that workers were authorized to work in the U.S.
Six NuStar employees subpoenaed by Hearst and asked to produce identification and work authorization documents ultimately invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, the judge wrote.
Williams also noted that NuStar has never used the Department of Homeland Security’s voluntary program to check workers’ eligibility for employment, e-Verify.
In a deposition in the case, Nunes — who stepped down from Congress last year to become CEO of Trump’s social media venture, Trump Media & Technology Group — called e-Verify a failed program, said it does not work and is discriminatory, the judge said. But Williams noted that Nunes praised the same program during a 2019 Fox News interview and suggested it should be mandatory.
“It’s worked really, really well,” Nunes said. “And that means, if everybody was certified by the government that everybody working for you is, in fact, here on a legal permit, that in the long run is great.”
An attorney who represents Nunes, his relatives and the farm, Steven Biss, did not respond to a message seeking comment on the ruling.
Nunes could appeal the judge’s ruling to the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.
In 2020, Williams dismissed Nunes’ suit against Lizza and Hearst. However, an 8th Circuit panel reinstated that case by ruling that it was possible Lizza republished his story by tweeting it out in 2019.
In his new decision, Williams said Nunes hadn’t produced evidence to support the notion that the 2019 tweet amounted to republishing the story
Lizza declined to comment on the ruling.
A spokesperson for Hearst did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The suits against Hearst and Lizza were part of a flurry of at least 10 lawsuits Nunes filed beginning in 2019 against media organizations, journalists and critics he accused of defaming him. The most famous suit sought $250 million from Twitter, Democratic political strategist Liz Mair and anonymous figures operating Twitter accounts labeled as “Devin Nunes’ Mom” and “Devin Nunes’ Cow.”
A Virginia judge dismissed Twitter from the case in 2020 and the remainder of the complaint last year.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The district attorney’s office planned to ask an appeals court to intervene quickly and stop the deposition, a spokesperson for the office said.
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg against Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and the Judiciary panel, which he chairs. Bragg sought a court order preventing the House from enforcing the subpoena, arguing that the House had no legitimate legislative purpose in issuing the subpoena and that it intends to examine the district attorney’s internal deliberations regarding the criminal case it brought against Trump last month.
But Vyskocil, who was appointed by Trump, found that Jordan and the committee “have identified several valid legislative purposes underlying the subpoena,” including the committee’s interest in investigating federal forfeiture funds used in connection with the investigation of Trump, as well as possible legislative reforms to “insulate current and former presidents from state prosecutions.”
The Judiciary committee also has contended that its purpose in issuing the subpoena is to study the potential effects that the threat of a future prosecution could have on a president while he is in office.
And though Bragg argued that the true purpose of Jordan’s inquiry was to “undermine and obstruct” the case against Trump, the judge said the motivations of the committee were “irrelevant.”
At a hearing in Manhattan federal court earlier Wednesday, the judge challenged lawyers for both sides aggressively and focused extensively, as she did in her written ruling, on a book Pomerantz wrote about his experience investigating Trump at the district attorney’s office.
At the hearing, Vyskocil questioned whether Pomerantz had already disclosed privileged information in his writings and in related television interviews, at one point holding up a copy of the book, “People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account,” which had been heavily bookmarked with colorful flags.
And she questioned whether the district attorney’s office had taken steps to prevent or address Pomerantz’s disclosures. Leslie Dubeck, Bragg’s general counsel, said that after publication, the office had alerted the New York City Department of Investigation to potential misdemeanor violations by Pomerantz in disclosing certain information.
“Does it preserve your confidences?” the judge asked Dubeck of Pomerantz’s book. After a pause, Dubeck replied, “no.”
In her written decision, Vyskocil found that the district attorney’s office had taken no action either before or after the publication of Pomerantz’s book to protect privileged information. “This repeated inaction constitutes acquiescence to the disclosure of any otherwise privileged information,” she wrote.
Though Pomerantz has argued that if he is deposed he will be caught between either violating privilege rules or potentially being held in contempt of court, Vyskocil offered no sympathy.
“Pomerantz is in this situation,” she wrote, “because he decided to inject himself into the public debate by authoring a book that he has described as ‘appropriate and in the public interest.’”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“Pezzola has not shown how any of this relates to an element of an offense with which he is charged — or how it relates to him at all,” Kelly wrote, adding, “Nor has the evidence been suppressed. As the Court has already explained to Pezzola, he cannot base a [suppression] claim on information he has long possessed.”
As the trial of five Proud Boys — including former national chairman Enrique Tarrio — inches toward a conclusion this week, Kelly sidelined several of the most sensational allegations that Pezzola’s attorneys had lodged. Among them: that prosecutors had destroyed evidence related to the case, that they coerced false guilty pleas from other Proud Boys and that they doctored at least one report from an informant to obscure an FBI agent’s involvement.
Kelly summed up his response to these claims in a section of his order headlined: “There Is No Evidence of Government Misconduct, Let Alone Misconduct Warranting Dismissal, a Mistrial, or Other Sanctions,”
Kelly described Pezzola’s theories as “bizarre,” based on “conjecture” and other times not based on anything at all.
“At bottom, not one of Pezzola’s contentions withstands scrutiny,” Kelly wrote. “His factual premises lack support, and his legal premises cannot be squared with case law.”
In his order, Kelly also rejected claims that prosecutors had improperly withheld key evidence in the case by claiming it was classified. The Justice Department worked frantically to reclaim 80 lines of internal FBI messages that it had inadvertently provided to the defense lawyers in the case, saying they were never meant to be turned over and were likely classified. The effort prompted defense lawyers to raise questions about whether prosecutors were seeking to seal away significant exculpatory evidence under the guise of a classification issue.
Kelly rejected this speculation in his order, contending that they had no bearing on the defense’s case at all.
“The Court has reviewed the 80 messages produced to it in camera and finds — regardless of whether they were properly classified or even properly categorized as law-enforcement sensitive — that the Government had no duty to produce them to the defendants in the first place,” he wrote.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Claire Bischoff, a Dominion spokesperson, said the company would have no comment on the trial delay. Representatives for Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp., the entities Dominion is suing, did not immediately return requests for comment. In his statement, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis said only that the trial, including jury selection, would be continued until Tuesday and that he would announce the delay in court on Monday.
That’s when Fox News executives and the network’s star hosts were scheduled to begin answering for their role in spreading doubt about the 2020 presidential election and creating the gaping wound that remains in America’s democracy.
Jurors hearing the $1.6 billion lawsuit filed against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems would have to answer a specific question: Did Fox defame the voting machine company by airing bogus stories alleging that the election was rigged against then-President Donald Trump, even as many at the network privately doubted the false claims being pushed by Trump and his allies?
Yet the broader context looms large. A trial would test press freedom and the reputation of conservatives’ favorite news source. It also would illuminate the flow of misinformation that helped spark the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and continues to fuel Trump’s hopes to regain power in 2024.
Fox News stars Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and founder Rupert Murdoch are among the people who had been expected to testify.
Barring a settlement, opening statements are now scheduled for Tuesday.
“This is Christmas Eve for defamation scholars,” said RonNell Andersen Jones, a University of Utah law professor.
If the trial were a sporting event, Fox News would be taking the field on a losing streak, with key players injured and having just alienated the referee. Pretrial court rulings and embarrassing revelations about its biggest names have Fox on its heels.
Court papers released over the past two months show Fox executives, producers and personalities privately disbelieved Trump’s claims of a fraudulent election. But Dominion says Fox News was afraid of alienating its audience with the truth, particularly after many viewers were angered by the network’s decision to declare Democrat Joe Biden the winner in Arizona on election night in November 2020.
Some rulings by the judge have eased Dominion’s path. In a summary judgment, Davis said it was “CRYSTAL clear” that fraud allegations against the company were false. That means trial time won’t have to be spent disproving them at a time when millions of Republicans continue to doubt the 2020 results.
Davis said it also is clear that Dominion’s reputation was damaged, but that it would be up to a jury to decide whether Fox acted with “actual malice” — the legal standard — and, if so, what that’s worth financially.
Fox witnesses would likely testify that they thought the allegations against Dominion were newsworthy, but Davis made it clear that’s not a defense against defamation.
New York law protects news outlets from defamation for expressions of opinion. But Davis methodically went through 20 different times on Fox when allegations against Dominion were discussed, ruling that all of them were fully or partly considered statements of fact, and fair game for a potential libel finding.
“A lawsuit is a little bit like hitting a home run,” said Cary Coglianese, law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “You have to go through all of the bases to get there.” The judge’s rulings “basically give Dominion a spot at third base, and all they have to do is come home to win it.”
Both Fox and Dominion are incorporated in Delaware, though Fox News is headquartered in New York and Dominion is based in Denver.
Fox angered Davis this past week when the judge said the network’s lawyers delayed producing evidence and were not forthcoming in revealing Murdoch’s role at Fox News. A Fox lawyer, Blake Rohrbacher, sent a letter of apology to Davis on Friday, saying it was a misunderstanding and not an intention to deceive.
It’s not clear whether that would affect a trial. But it’s generally not wise to have a judge wonder at the outset of a trial whether your side is telling the truth, particularly when truth is the central point of the case, Jones said.
The lawsuit essentially comes down to whether Dominion can prove Fox acted with actual malice by putting something on the air knowing that it was false or acting with a “reckless disregard” for whether it was true. In most libel cases, that is the most difficult hurdle for plaintiffs to get past.
Dominion can point to many examples where Fox figures didn’t believe the charges being made by Trump allies such as Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani. But Fox says many of those disbelievers were not in a position to decide when to air those allegations.
“We think it’s essential for them to connect those dots,” Fox lawyer Erin Murphy said.
If the case goes to trial, the jury will determine whether a powerful figure like Murdoch — who testified in a deposition that he didn’t believe the election-fraud charges — had the influence to keep the accusations off the air.
“Credibility is always important in any trial in any case. But it’s going to be really important in this case,” said Jane Kirtley, director of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and the Law at the University of Minnesota.
Kirtley is concerned that the suit may eventually advance to the U.S. Supreme Court, which could use it as a pretext to weaken the actual malice standard that was set in a 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. That, she feels, would be disastrous for journalists.
Dominion’s lawsuit is being closely watched by another voting-technology company with a separate but similar case against Fox News. Florida-based Smartmatic has looked to some rulings and evidence in the Dominion case to try to enhance its own $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit in New York. The Smartmatic case isn’t yet ready for trial but has survived Fox News’ effort to get it tossed out.
Many experts are surprised Fox and Dominion have not reached an out-of-court settlement, though they can at any time. There’s presumably a wide financial gulf. In court papers, Fox contends the $1.6 billion damages claim is a wild overestimate.
Dominion’s motivation may also be to inflict maximum embarrassment on Fox with the peek into the network’s internal communications following the election. Text messages from January 2021 revealed Carlson telling a friend that he passionately hated Trump and couldn’t wait to move on.
Dominion may also seek an apology.
The trial has had no apparent effect on Fox News’ viewership; it remains the top-rated cable network. And there is little indication that the case has changed Fox’s editorial direction. Fox has embraced Trump once again in recent weeks following the former president’s indictment by a Manhattan grand jury, and Carlson presented an alternate history of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, based on tapes given to him by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
