Goodbye House of Lords, Hello Supreme Court.

It's now official. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will now have themselves a brand new Supreme Court.

On October 1, 2009, the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom will replace the House of Lords as the highest court of appeal for Great Britain and the 12 "Law Lords" will then become justices.

The new Supreme Court will hear appeals from the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, the Court of Justiciary and the Court of Sessions in Scotland and the Supreme Court of Judicature in Northern Ireland. The new high court will also hear appeals from the highest courts of 30 British possessions, such as Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands and even a few otherwise independent countries like Jamaica but unlike our Supreme Court, the new British Supreme Court will have no power of judicial review over statutes since Great Britain has no written constitution.

The mother country does one up her former colony on this side of the pond in one respect - all of the proceedings of the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom will be televised. I hope John Roberts and company are paying attention.

This law clerk brought to you by....

Apparently the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is OK with law firms footing the bill for judges' law clerks but personally I find it very troubling, both ethically and practically. The potential conflict of interest when a judge is involved in a case that also involves the law firm paying the salary of the judge's clerk's is obvious but perhaps less so is the fact that I, for one, would probably not be able to be as open or be able to have a free-flowing discussion in chambers about a case where I didn't feel that my clerk owed me and the court their full allegiance and loyalty.

News of the Weird.

When you think of things to be thankful for, "lizard tattoo on the penis" probably does not immediately leap to mind but it ought to be at the top of this guy's list since it probably kept him out of prison for a long time.

Lawyer asks court to require opponent to wear new shoes.

Heaven forbid that a lawyer be permitted to project "an air of unsophisticated honesty" to a jury.

Boing Boing Via Instapundit.

And we think we have problems.

How about a country ( a British possession no less) where all of the judges are feuding with each other and where they all have either been "arrested, suspended or mired in controversy?" And the judiciary isn't the only disfunctional branch of the government - the police chief was fired for being involved in a burglary of the newspaper office but has since been exonerated and is now suing (although it isn't clear where they are going to find a judge to hear the lawsuit).

Apparently, the situation is so bad that not even Scotland Yard can figure out what is going on. (This story certainly doesn't provide much information.)

Where is all this happening? Why in the place synonymous with avoiding taxes and hiding ill gotten gains, the Cayman Islands.

Via Instapundit.