| Indeed, it is usually individuals and occasionally a lawyer who are jailed for
contempt. That may be because corporate behaviour tends to be less illegal in
the UK, because there is still a great respect for the law, although I fear that
may be changing. Some of the cases we have seen here would be unthinkable in
the UK. For instance, I always hoped that SCO would try to sue someone here,
just to see the case flung out of court rather vigorously. Judges here are
generally intolerant of nonsense, and I think they would like to be equally
intolerant in the US (how judge Kimball managed to keep his temper at times I
can't begin to imagine), but much of what they do is trying to avoid creating
grounds for appeal. We do have an effective appeals system here, but judges
don't seem to have to worry about it so much. On the other hand, the
difference may be due to the UK laws being less complex, more clearly written
without so many loopholes (maybe, I can't prove that), and not having the
ridiculous complexity of 50 different jurisdictions, each with their own,
largely unnecessary, set of laws, some of which, such as in Delaware, are
clearly designed to facilitate corporate corruption. We have several different
jurisdictions, but they generally only interact at the level of the final
appeal. But there have been worrying tendencies, particularly during the B.
Liar government, to bring some of the worst parts of the US system to the UK.
The first thing to appear was the ambulance chasers, albeit not so obvious and
aggressive as in the US. Fortunately the present government is far too
preoccupied with the economy to have time to mess about too much with the legal
system. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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