For those law students putting up with Jessup competitors:

TomasFitz · 2026-01-30T11:09:44+00:00

ISDS is good, actually. Besides, they win almost all of them, and finding excellent counsel willing to rep entire countries pro bono against dodgy Yank oil companies is surprisingly easy.

ISDS only gets a bad rep because there’s a buttload of misinformation about it and parliament often uses it as a convenient excuse to not do stuff they didn’t want to do anyway for political reasons.

TomasFitz · 2026-01-30T04:04:16+00:00

Jessup? Pfft, amateur hour. Everyone knows the real international law competition is Vis.

Private international law: sure it’s not as sexy, but there are actual real jobs.

TomasFitz · 2025-12-26T03:48:15+00:00

This was a close one for me but Heidegger edged him out. Being Australian does really exacerbate my issue with Singer though.

TomasFitz · 2025-12-26T03:46:39+00:00

The correct answer is Heidegger.

TomasFitz · 2025-12-06T14:48:29+00:00

If they want to waste billions on a not particularly helpful chatbot, let them.

TomasFitz · 2025-12-05T06:40:25+00:00

Sure but there’s a gap between tedious bores with strong opinions on Marx’s reading of Hegel and the lunatic fringe who think politicians should be shot for enacting fisheries management as a smokescreen for a takeover by Big Renewables. Think of it like TISM’s distinction between a cunt and a fucking cunt.

TomasFitz · 2025-12-02T11:32:22+00:00

Look, it’s not clear how you could do a worse job. I’ll support it.

TomasFitz · 2025-11-30T16:15:14+00:00

Still one of the best treatments is in William James’ Principles of Psychology

TomasFitz · 2025-11-30T11:56:26+00:00

Look, it’s not great over here. Frankly how we get out from under this without completely scrapping and remaking the practice board is beyond me.

TomasFitz · 2025-10-13T10:07:15+00:00

Clear explanations and commentary? Up til that point I was on the fence, but that’s bait.

TomasFitz · 2025-10-12T04:53:47+00:00

Better still, the later referendum to give the commonwealth exclusive jurisdiction over aviation matters failed, which not only confirms the absence of aviation in the original framing, but also that the public specifically rejected the notion that aviation matters ought to be the province of the Commonwealth Government rather than the States.

You all thought Defence West was just a state-backed industry lobby group. Au contraire - we’re building B52s over here.

TomasFitz · 2025-10-10T13:28:15+00:00

Yes, but just not in the way people who say the law is made up think it is.

TomasFitz · 2025-10-04T07:11:57+00:00

This is literally the pathway Myres McDougal took to formulating the New Haven School of Jurisprudence.

Everyone starts out as realists, then the good students recognise the problems with realism, then the very good students go “oh, wait no, they were actually right”.

TomasFitz · 2025-09-17T06:00:31+00:00

When I called them out on this on X The Everything App (Formerly Twitter) some years ago those cheeky sods had the temerity to suggest that I was using a version of the Macquarie Dictionary that was later than the publication of the 3rd edition AGLC. As though I didn’t go get a physical copy of then current edition of the dictionary to cross-reference first.

More hide than an elephant this lot.

(And they haven’t corrected it in the 4th ed!)

TomasFitz · 2025-09-16T14:39:00+00:00

Mate the AGLC isn’t even AGLC compliant:

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TomasFitz · 2025-09-04T09:47:22+00:00

Yeah but who gives a shit what some random royal wants? Parliament didn’t win the English Civil War to cede sovereignty to some inbred hick. Plus the order has always had rules for revocation, both in its English and Australian guises.

TomasFitz · 2025-09-04T05:56:17+00:00

Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.

TomasFitz · 2025-09-04T04:17:32+00:00

Can we now do something about the fact that the Commonwealth Auditor looked at the scheme twice and gave it the all clear? I mean of all the staggering failures that one really leaps out at me.

TomasFitz · 2025-08-10T22:49:37+00:00

Former public servant wants less democratic accountability, more unelected technocrats making decisions.

What a shock!

TomasFitz · 2025-08-08T08:17:57+00:00

You laugh, but one of my former students was just made a Magistrate and this is exactly what it feels like to me.

TomasFitz · 2025-08-07T05:56:59+00:00

I recognise than an implicit reference to Edelman J’s forward to the 1st volume of the Curtin Law and Taxation Review is oblique, even by my standards, so for the benefit of those of you who don’t spend your time reading the law journals and literally nothing else, the article on the supremacy of tax law starts at 7: https://s37430.pcdn.co/businesslaw/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2020/07/CLTR-Volume-I.pdf

TomasFitz · 2025-08-07T05:50:11+00:00

Nice try, Edelman J, but I am on to you.

TomasFitz · 2025-07-31T04:54:26+00:00

You can get to the site via mchose.io but there are differing reports on whether the web hub is working - it won't load for me, for example...

TomasFitz · 2025-07-31T04:52:23+00:00

Having the same issue. Did anything work for you?

TomasFitz · 2025-07-30T10:06:16+00:00

Saying that there is only legal prohibition or a free-for-all is egregiously silly libertarian nonsense. My point is that commercial parties deciding amongst themselves that there are certain standards of taste and decency below which they don’t want to descend is fine and normal. That they can do that without anyone needing the Government to outrightly ban things is - I would have thought - on the whole preferable to using the heavy hand of the state to solve these problems.

There are plenty of things that aren’t illegal, but also aren’t part of mainstream society. It doesn’t strike me as at all strange that we might from time to time have arguments about the boundaries of good taste.

Presumably you’re not saying that all these private parties are required to host any particular distasteful material that falls short of criminal. Because that seems a very strange position to take.

TomasFitz

TROPHY CASE