A major flaw in our laws are that the penalty often doesn't fit the crime.

As an example, one can drive while under the influence, or while impaired by medication, strike a perestrian and get off rather lightly, yet, if you get caught fishing in a green zone, you are automaticly given a criminal record.

If you are caught with an under sized crab, you loose your car, your boat and all your gear, yet, the one who hit a pedestrian while intoxicated gets finned by does not loose their car. Go figure!

I heard recently that if you are caught doing in excess of 30Km over the speed limit, you receive a criminal record. But are you a criminal? More importantly, why is this now a criminal offence when a few years ago it wasn't?

It is against the law to smoke within 3 mt of the entrance to a comercial building, but who really polices this?

David Jennings,
Perhaps more thought is needed. It doesn't matter a fig who raises a discussion only that is reasonable written and *intelligently argued* with some sense of proportion and objectivity. This article is one such case.

Each to to their own i.e. for my I use a pseudonym simple because my name is "well...identifiable" experience has shown that declaring myself my family has been abused, my house 'egged', my son's car damaged. I 'll take what is coming to *me* but it is monumentally unfair that my *family* cop flack for *my* opinions or vise versa.

As LE points out not everyone else is quite so reasoning.
For that reason telephone councilors never give out personal details.
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Legal Eagle,
Personally I found your article lacking in substance and a mite duplicitous, overly theoretical/academic re lawyers practice.

We both know that law/lawyers has little to do with justice/fairness/equity or any such 'noble' concepts.It about tactics, Black Letter law, interpretation, precedents and money.i.e the dismissal against Elliott and the NZ fraud. (tactical error) or against the banks with foreign loans.

So long as the focus remains as such the law will remain something less that appropriate and subject to justified criticism.

rehctub, the missus, make good practical examples.

Your argument in fact the focus of your PHD subject if reflected by this article is all practical reasons pointless/academic/solves nothing/adds nothing.

It ignores cultural pressures *see above comment* on consequences.

It also assumes, non existent perpetrator reasoning and ignores emotions (human nature), practicality of enforcement,judgement even the biases of the judicial operators and system.
Try complaining against a lawyer, doctor, the perverting effect of money i.e. major corps (e.g. Hardie ind).
Major corps that 'negotiate' tax liability.
Flaws in corporate governance. HIH, Quintex, Bond corp,etc.

Then we can consider the way laws are formulated and passed.
If I were your adviser I'd tell you to think again about what is it you are trying to come to a *meaningful* conclusion *about*.
To me the thesis is too narrow/superficial.
good luck anyway

Legal Eagle,
I forgot to point out that all the examples show fundamental *and* systemic failures.
As such I fail to see that worthiness of the outlined 'limits of the law'.
I simply ask what will your thesis achieve? An in depth discussion of most of the limitations of the law and pointing to areas of practical improvement?
My understanding of a PHD thesis is that it rigourously *adds* something sufficiently *new* or meaningful to the topic.
Perhaps I'm being too harsh or simply wrong in my expectations.

Blair's Iraqi problem must be shared.

Certainly needs an efficient body like UNESCO on the job, taking in not only Blair's former cabinet as well as present UK Labor PM, Brown.

John Howard and his former Cabinet must also be perused, seeng that Howard was very strongly pro both Blair and Bush.

Very much also of course, a good shaking up of the media, which surely in America and Britain must be very much suffering underground control by certain Jews who years ago in the early Israeli days were taken in by the US joining US Jewish groups though said to have lost much power in the White House, one can only surmise the way the former strong UN has become a laughing stock, that what could be termed arparthaid style intrusion is still
strongly active.

Though just an aged student who has only learnt during retirement, must say how difficult it has become even to stay middle-road as every decent Aussie aged student these worrying days should be.

After my loving wife's death, I have been trying to pray for Obama, still trying to stay middle-road rather than taking a side, and as it seems that much of our media has been relying on steerage, one can only rely on a hope with a capital H, having lost most of the faith the way I reckon Faith should be?

>>We can’t have a situation, which is evident with the policing of many road rules for example, where the police turn a blind eye to minor infringements of all sorts, thus leading the public to understand that lots of things are not policed at face value, and then have a blitz and bust people who don’t observe the absolute letter of the law.<<

What this is really showing is the full cycle of the pendulum swing. Cops can be lazy through to not being properly resourced/supported by their management, and subsequently not police the rules adequately. Then one day the shite hits the fan (eg the Minister gets angry due to political pressure and demands the cops to do a better job etc) and the cops go on a blitz and nab everyone who does the slightest thing wrong and throw their reasonable judgement out the window for fear of being seen to be slack by their commanders.

The key to solving this problem is for the cops to keep their policing proportional to the situations they deal with and to keep up a steady, unrelenting pressure on policing particular types of bad behaviour. But that's pretty easy to say in ideas space, I guess, but a lot harder to actually do in the real world. The fact is, they can only do so much with the numbers they've got. As soon as the smart crims realise where the police are putting their efforts, they go where they know the police are not looking. From recent media reports, it looks like the serious crime gangs are big into identity fraud, card skimming and electronic theft - they get away with it because they're always one step ahead of the "justice system".

Robp, there are various problems with the regulation of laws, not least a lack of resources.

But there can be no excuse for the espousal of one thing and the policing of something else.

For example, the police have this great catch-phrase; ‘Every K over is a killer’. But they don’t police the speed limit at face value, they allow a considerable leeway, which by all indications seems to be 10kmh over on the open highway and in most situations. Speed-measuring devices don’t have a 10kmh error margin. So what’s their thinking?

This is complicated by the police telling us that there is some leeway, but they’ll never tell us just how much leeway, which stinks! The public have every right to know just exactly what the police are policing!

And it is complicated by the fact that police can pull you over for doing 1kmh over if they wish. So they can target people and act in a grossly unfair manner if they want to, with impunity. They can pull one vehicle out of a line of steadily flowing traffic where everyone is doing the same speed and charge them with speeding while letting everyone else go.

The police can be cruising around slowly. They can observe all sorts of infringements and not act on them. Then they can pull someone over for some piffling infringement of the sort that they’d turn a blind eye to 99.9% of the time.

continued