User talk:Plasma

Welcome

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia, by the way! You can sign your posts with the date and time using four tildes (~~~~)...this helps us keep track of discussions. I'd be happy to try to help if you've got any questions! — Matt 14:18, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Kable

Hi there. Thanks for the feedback. Feel free to have a go if you want to expand the article; it's not something I am particularly attached to, but rather I was just trying to work out, over a beer after work today, whether the Kable principles would impose any restriction on Rob Hulls' current efforts to introduce temorary Justices of the Supreme Court of Victoria. So I came home and reread Kable, and concluded that it probably poses no obstacle. Checkout Wikipedia:WikiProject Australian law if you're interested in this kind of thing. I'm trying to find time to flesh out List of High Court of Australia cases, but it's a big ask. --SilasM 10:16, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ooh, quite an interesting question. I don't know, but personally I could definitely see Kable as being a potential grounds for blocking temporary Supreme Court justices. This is given that Kable basically says that the Act was invalid because of its supposed effects on the integrity, independence and impartiality of the court, which was incompatible with the Supreme Court's additional role as a Commonwealth court (at least that's what Gaudron, McHugh & Gummow thought, I'm just working from the headnote for the moment so no page references for now, though the other majority opinions aren't far off finding that). I think it would be very easy to argue that the tenure of judges being temporary could definitely have such an effect.

While I haven't read it all in a while, I have a niggling feeling that Cheatle v The Queen 177 CLR 541 would also strongly support this view, since if the High Court won't accept majority jury verdicts in state courts dealing with Commonwealth matters on indictment for constitutional and historical reasons, I think nearly identical reasoning could be used to find that to be a valid judicial decision for the purposes of the Commonwealth constitution you'd have to have life tenure for judicial officers, and Kable's reasoning could be used to extend this to all matters of the court.

I could definitely be wrong, but I think between Cheatle and Kable there's more than enough authority for the court to block temporary judicial appointments, and certainly more Authority than I feel the court actually had in deciding Kable, where the court basically overruled their own precedent in the BLF Case. Anyway, let me know what you think. Plasma 10:56, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure about Cheatle v The Queen. I haven't read it in years, but I think that the comments in Kable are much more direct. I now revise my earlier view, and suspect that Kable offers a very respectable argument that Hulls' scheme is impermissible. I refer especially to 138 ALR 577 and the remarks of McHugh J at 622-4 (the State courts 'must be, and must be perceived to be, independent of the legislature and the executive'), and also, less directly, to Toohey J at 608, Gaudron J at 615, McHugh J at 618-9; 621-2, Gummow J at 641-4. --SilasM 00:05, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yep, those are the exact points I was referring to as to the requirement that the judiciary be perceived as unaffected in its integrity, independence and impartiality, I simply didn't have the time to find the page references. I brought up Cheatle not because it was directly on-point, but it showed a precedent of finding that changes to key aspects of the judicial system (in Cheatle's case the use of majority verdicts in jury cases) would be found impermissible under the Commonwealth constitution. From that I would believe that the court would similarly find that the Commonwealth constitution would not permit temporary judicial appointments, then from that Kable would extend that federal principle to state matters. I know it's a somewhat indirect and convoluted path to the conclusion, but even Kable itself lies no less a convoluted basis, since the seperation of powers at the federal level only exists by implication. Anyway, I do agree Kable alone could be used as a more direct attack on the constitutionality of temporary judges, I merely added Cheatle as additional authority. Plasma 09:56, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This has been a thorn in your saddle for some time? --SilasM 10:07, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hehehe, yeah, I've always been a bit obsessed with Kable v DPP ever since I first ran into it. I've always just seen it as being a finding based on the undeniable tendency of judges to find in accordance with the interests of the judiciary regardless of the actual law. To be fair I've always been something of a believer in parliamentary supremacy, and Kable simply stands (in my view) as one of the most wishy-washy grounds for violating that principle yet. Anyway, I've ranted plenty for now :) Plasma 10:16, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The DHARMA Initiative Split vote

I hope you don't mind a general reply to what most if not all of those opposed to the split on The DHARMA Initiative have said "we don't really have enough information on just the stations to justify an entire article just for the stations." I would like to point out that it is exactly the opposite, there is very little information about "The DHARMA Initiative" since everything seams to be about the stations. I decided that I'd see exactly how much of the article actually talked about the Initiative compared to the Stations. So I grabbed the sections that talk specifically about those subjects and I used the word counter found inside of MS Word to judge the content. Here is what I found:

Initiative focus on the page : These sections were the "intro" "History and purpose" & "Dr. Marvin Candle"

• Pages - 1
• Words - 242
• Characters (no spaces) - 1,309
• Characters (with spaces) - 1,544
• Paragraphs - 7
• Lines - 23

Stations focus on the page : Everything not in the Initiative focus, except for "Trivia" "References" & "External links" were included in the Stations.

• Pages - 4
• Words - 1,476
• Characters (no spaces) - 7,143
• Characters (with spaces) - 8,574
• Paragraphs - 46
• Lines - 132

The judgment that this page doesn't have a lot of info about the stations seams to be incorrect... the problem is that going by word count only (and almost exactly) 1/7th of the page actually talks about the Initiative while the rest of that 6/7th talks about the stations... This page is heavily focused on the stations and it should be acknowledged as such. So we have a choice to create a new article about the stations or re-name this article to reflect its focus!

I hope that this helps and Please put your reply in the comments section of the Initiative talk page. -- UKPhoenix79 02:34, 26 April 2006 (UTC)