Slashdot Mirror
Judge Doesn't Know What a Web Site is
An anonymous reader writes "A British judge admitted on Wednesday he was struggling to cope with basic terms like "Web site" in the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism via the Internet.
Judge Peter Openshaw broke into the questioning of a witness about a Web forum used by alleged Islamist radicals.
"The trouble is I don't understand the language. I don't really understand what a Web site is". he told a London court during the trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws.
Prosecutor Mark Ellison briefly set aside his questioning to explain the terms "Web site" and "forum." An exchange followed in which the 59-year-old judge acknowledged: "I haven't quite grasped the concepts.""
Have Ted Stevens explain it to him
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
The judge wasn't so proud as to pretend understanding and then issue a potentially unjust ruling.
Would that all judges had the same strength of character in this regard.
Give him credit for admitting he didn't understand. Clearly he needs to be able to understand the concept in order to rule on the case. What are the options when a judge just doesn't understand? Do we need a "technical" set of judges to handle these types of cases?
Cheers.
Mark
Thank god I'm not the only one...
"Heh. Totally pwned that prosecutor. ZOMG! Ponies!"
website: noun: a doorway to a series of tubes
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Some might say that 59 isn't that old, but the fact remains that there are still plenty of people that grew up before the computer and/or internet revolution. Eventually, however, having some knowledge of technical terms will be inevitable.
True story:
I once was in a conversation with a highly paid Ivy League-educated lawyer. Somehow (don't ask) the fact that the sun's surface temperature is thousands of degrees came up. The lawyer said, "oh, is that how it stays up, then?" No one knew what she meant. "Well, is that why the sun doesn't fall down, because hot things rise?" she continued. Stunned silence. Then everyone speaking at once about, you know, the copernican view of the universe. The highly paid lawyer was not embarrassed. Instead she asked a lot of questions. They started out stupid, but over the course of 15 minutes of intense questioning she picked
up pretty much everything I knew about solar and planetary astronomy (which is a lot). By the end she was asking really clever questions I couldn't answer.
Lesson I learned: you get to be a highly paid lawyer by being smart, not by knowing anything in particular. And I would happily have her defend me in a trial.
Just try looking up "person" in Black's Law Dictionary. The wording is important, as specific terms mean specific strings of legal precedents. Judges recuse themselves for good reasons all the time, and this guy did the right thing. Would you rather he'd judged a case with vague user-end impressions?
I wish everyone who wasn't up to an important job would say so.
Looks like everyone took the sensationalist bait on this.
Article is pretty light on details but it seems like the judge is trying to understand what a website actually "is"...it seems like an issue in this case is where the defendants' activities took place.
So perhaps he realized he needed to know more than "a window that comes up on your computer" as far as what a website is. It doesn't seem unreasonable for a 59-year-old in a completely non-technical job to not know how a website is put together; "what is a website?" is a feasible way to ask not only "describe this thing to me", but also "what makes up this thing?". Maybe he was asking the latter.
Look, nobody expects judges to be experts in everything. In particular, nobody expects judges to be knowledgeable about something that was INVENTED when they were in their 40s and was really a fad-for-young-people until a relatively short time ago.
What we expect judges to do is make fair rulings.
How can a judge who doesn't know anything about web sites and online forums make reasonable rulings? Well, he can't. And he knows this. So, the judge -- and MOST JUDGES -- have two choices:
- Learn enough to make a fair ruling
- Fake it and pick the lawyer with the nicest tie
Now, it has been fairly obvious that COMPLETELY CLUESS judges are making case law around the world. That is quite clearly BAD.
A judge willing to admit he lacks the deep understanding required to make a ruling, and taking steps to work around/solve the problem? NO PROBLEM, in my opinion, as long as he comes to the table with an open mind, impartiality, and a good sense of jurisprudence.
That said -- I think the judge should spend a few hours participating in IRC, reading bash.org, taking part in a forum about something he likes (maybe his car), checking out tubgirl, some pr0n, masturbating and so forth. Then maybe he will actually understand the medium. Somebody (prosecutor) should suggest that.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
No, just the opposite. He's perfect for true justice. The solicitors will have to spend an hour or so having someone explain the basic concepts of the internet. From there the judge can listen to the facts of the case without any clouding of his judgment from any preconceived notions.
... blah blah blah."
"This is a web page. There are about a billion of them in existence, and about a billion people viewing the web pages. Anyone can pay to have access to the internet. Anyone can get free or very cheap space to put up their own web pages. We are accusing these men of doing just that to incite hatred
(Don't bother correcting my estimates of web sites and users. I know it's wrong)
-- Will program for bandwidth
He's ready to retire and take up photography again. And he LOVES the digital options. He's already setup his own website and uses Photoshop. He knows more about digital cameras than I do.
It's not age. It's interest.
He's found that his old interest has taken a new turn with computerization and he has spent his spare time learning all about it.
After talking with lawyers and paralegals that I know personally, I think that most geeks would have a natural talent for law. At the very least, they have a talent for legal research, as witnessed by the stuff that happens on Groklaw
My blog
Ok, that is NOT what "Luddite" means. Ignorance alone does not make one a Luddite. Would you also call me a Luddite, because I don't understand the semiconductor physics inside of this computer I'm using? The Luddites were people who actively sought to destroy technology that would affect their livelyhoods. This judge does not appear to display either fear or antagonism towards this "web-site" technology, only difficulty understanding it (or maybe only finding a suitably concrete definition for his legalistic mind!).
Hey, at least he admitted that he didn't understand! There is a lot to be said for a judge who is honest.
But judges are smart guys and many of them understand exactly what is going on. Look at this recent appeals court ruling for example (about a pornography website suing Google for making their images available through image search). Can you point to a single technically inaccurate statement in the entire 50-page ruling? (The only thing that caught my eye is referring to HTML markup as "instructions", but even that is not really inaccurate in context, simply out of sync with usual jargon).
Ignorance in situations of justice is only useful when you have ignorance of the criminal or case being tried. You don't want a judge or jury to have preconceptions about the innocence or guilt of the parties involved.
That doesn't mean you want legal decision-makers completely ignorant of even the basic working infrastructure of our modern society. Far from your notion that the judge can just "listen to the facts" -- rather than being able to take internet information for granted while his mind moves on to the pertinent facts of the case, he's wasting valuable brain cycles trying to figure out what this whole web site thing is on the fly as he either puzzles over it himself or TAKES SOMEONE ELSE'S WORD that what it is is important or not important to the case. Is it relevant to innocence or guilt? Is it not? He doesn't know because he's too much in the dark to even have figured out what my 90 year old grandmother knows.
Besides the issues of not knowing a basic building block of the case, it's just appalling that a judge in a modern society could have his head so far buried in the sand to not know what a web site is. Does his lack of observational skills extend to facts being dispensed in the case?
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
I agree. I have a handful of friends that graduated with CS degrees in order to enroll in law school.
My opinion is that our minds are already geared for the IF definition THEN result, EXCEPT WHEN whatever kind of language that most laws that I've read are written in.
You are awash in a sea of fiercely stated opinions. Obvious exits are: 'File->Quit', 'Reply', and 'Page Down'.
Jurors are frequently disqualified for knowing too much, but it should be the opposite for a judge, I think.
The Judge should know about the law. Other matters such as the changes in confirmation of the co-enzymes in the Krebs cycle, or indeed the technical aspects of communications technology, are best brought into evidence via expert witnesses. It is better judges get an expert explanation that proceed upon some fuzzy (mis)understanding. Remeber about 90% of people out there think that internet == WWW.
Maybe he should recuse himself.
Huh?! Can you cite some legal authority stating that judges are required to recuse themselves on the basis that they have no personal knowledge of some technical aspect of deliberations?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Is it possible for me to just say "DUH" and not have my karma changed to negative or worse?
then why hasn't he done so? if he doesn't even know what a website is he cannot have been given an expert explanation on the subject. and no, he needs to know more then just the law, he has to understand the case he is ruling on. and if that requires technical understanding then he bloody well needs to get it.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Its things like this that *did* make me go to law school.
I currently work for a judge and he refuses to have a computer in his chambers. Well, ok... there is a computer in his chambers but its unplugged and in the corner, with the screen facing the wall. His secretary prints out his email for him and he dictates his replies onto tape.
The scary thing is that I'm not actually kidding or even exaggerating.
That said, he does have a computer at home and a personal email address that he seems quite capable of using.
I would hope so, I'm kinda happy the judge didn't just try to act like he knew what was going on. I think, "Good for him".
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
I can believe it. A friend of mine works for a group of lawyers who insist that *every* email they receive (which can be hundreds per day per person - they're not shy with this 'techie' stuff) is printed out and filed with the appropriate case. This stuff eventually gets shuffled off to an off-site storage facility - usually without ever getting looked at. This is not a particularly small office - and they have appropriate backups in place. Unbelievable...
Here's a good judge. It's very professional to admit that he doesn't understand something.
Perhaps one would think that it would be easy to explain what a web site is. However, the definition of a website might not be so easy as you may think. Judges, like computer scientists, often have to tackle with very fine details and seek answers to subtle questions. For example: Should every website use the HTTP protocol? If yes, what if there is a law saying terrorist websites are illegal but the defendands used a slightly customised HTTP version? Furthermore, should every website include webpages? What if the law prohibits terrorist webpages, but the defendands just placed some gzip or pdf files on a public indexed directory served by Apache httpd? Is a non-indexed directory served by Apache a website? Can a website on the Principality of Sealand be prosecuted under US law? If you tunnel HTTP traffic through another protocol, would this qualify as website data? Is a website a publication? Is it still a publication if you open a website on a non-networked server? If you create a website unreadable by humans but readable by computers, would this qualify as a publication? Is a website that was online only for 3 minutes a kind of publication? Is the printout of a website still a website? Would the browser cache be regarded as copying potentially copyrighted material? If a very sucky webserver can only handle 3 requests per minute and you hit your Refresh/Reload button 4 times within a minute bringing the server down, would this be a DoS attack?
Absolutely. However, I think the gap is MUCH larger than we think it is. I am certain all of us have had that, "are you really serious?" moment when talking to someone over 50 and the gap between the generations is particularly large when it comes to computers and technology.
Every younger generation thinks the older generation is clueless. I understand that. I just think in this case, the gap between the two is much much larger than for previous generations. Perhaps those who had electricity vs those who didn't might be comparable but it is not the same as the baby-boomers vs. depression era folks.
Don't forget how big of a change computers and the "information society" is to the world as a whole. Nothing like this has ever been seen or experienced by mankind before. It is truly revolutionary. We are the first generation to "get it".
You should be careful when you read these kind of stories because judges sometimes "play dumb"; it's called "judicial ignorance".
Remember that any court case might turn out to be important and end up getting cited for years (Salomon v Salomon for example was a case heard in 1896 which is still imporant today). So the judge has to bear in mind that people reading the transcript in hundreds of years time won't have the assumed knowledge that all the rest of us have. When they ask dumb questions like "who are these Rolling Stones?" it may not be that they really don't know, it may be for the sake of making sure the explanation is in the record.
Not that I'm necessarily saying that's what happened in this case.
Secretary: "Sir, you got slashdotted." Judge, with curiosity: "Slashdotted?" Secretary: "Yes sir, it's a news website" Judge: "A website? um...?"
BA
When I was in college, I took an environmental law class. The guy teaching it used to work county public health or whatnot and had a few good stories.
One of the stories was to show how judges are sometimes in the position to interpret laws and regulations that are outside their scope of knowledge. One story goes that a case was about dumping of hazardous waste. The waste wasn't specifically listed as hazardous, but there are other procedures to test the compound's toxicity - such as exposing a certain species of fish to the compound for X days and seeing how they are doing at the end. If the fish are dead, then it's pretty obvious that the compound is toxic.
In this case, the fish toxicity testing data was presented to the judge and it went something as follows:
Judge: And do we have any of these fish in our county?
Answer: No, we don't have any of these fish in our county.
Judge: Then what do we have to worry about?
Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
It's like blood stains - we've all seen them but a judge still wants an expert to explain the fine points.
You're absolutely right.
We've all read some of the overlong slashdot replies/nerd emails that go to great lengths and painstaking detail, dismantling every aspect of the parent poster's point. Usually these posts include specific references to higher authority - textbooks, articles, past examples and other random websites.
Its exactly this combination of arrogance and pedantry that makes a good lawyer. The obsessive need to be absolutely, comprehensively and demonstratably RIGHT and for everyone to know it.
I knew that when I went to law school. Two things did surprise me though:
1. Law nerds have exactly the same sense of humour as computer nerds (pun or other liguistic trick based jokes, Monty Python etc); and
2. It really is exactly the same thought pattern for legal problem solving as it is for software development problem solving.
A misplaced semi-colon or the use of the wrong synonym can be as destructive in a piece of legislation or a 20 page judgment as it can in any piece of code.
Yeah, but laws usually run deeper recursions. If x then y, unless z, except when a, provided that b, unless c and d, but only when based on e and not f, with...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Several, including one that is 70+ who can tell me in detail why he thinks Intel's current CPU architecture is corner cutting crap and who actually did repair electonic medical equipment while he was hospitalised using only a nurses hairpin. Not bad for an electrical engineer who left university before solid state electronics moved out of the lab. Many of the technical folk use their retirement to get more up to date than they had a chance to do before - for example there are old woodworkers moving into putting together their own numerically controlled tools that had not a great deal of computer experience before.
>Unbelievable...
Until the *one* discovery request that receives *only* the closed file from the boxes at the off-site facility, 25 years from now.
Then it makes sense. Most of the litigation I was involved in (IANALBIHSLAWITF), had documentation spanning a period of about 1912 to about 1985.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The Judge should know about the law. Other matters such as the changes in confirmation of the co-enzymes in the Krebs cycle, or indeed the technical aspects of communications technology, are best brought into evidence via expert witnesses.
Would you trust a judge who's never ridden in a car to rule on traffic law? (Popular legend holds that the first legislators to set traffic law had never driven, and often came up with some hilarious laws...for example, that cars must be preceded by a flag man.)
Huh?! Can you cite some legal authority stating that judges are required to recuse themselves on the basis that they have no personal knowledge of some technical aspect of deliberations?
Not required, no. There are very few hard-and-fast rules that require a judge to recuse himself. But in this case, he is not only ignorant of the details, he has admitted that he cannot grasp the explanations thereof. He, as the judge, has to consider whether his lack of understanding is hindering the process of justice.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Another good one:
Barrister [to witness]: "In fact, wouldn't it be fair to say that you were drunk as a judge."
Judge: "Would you care to rephrase that?"
Barrister: "I do apologise; I mean't drunk as a lord, my lord."
...Not the fact that he doesn't know what a website is, but the fact that he admits to not knowing what a website is. The fact that he doesn't know what it is isn't a problem -- you can teach someone out of their ignorance. But think about how much worse it would be if he did what most judges do, i.e., pretend they know what they're talking about and make poor judgments and court decisions..
I hear there's more than one nowadays.
Yes this guy should be praised for his honesty of his utter ineptitude. What he should do is recuse himself from the case for someone who knows something. And he should be thanked and rewarded. He should then go take some courses to learn something about the internet. Meanwhile judges who don't admit that they don't know what it is should be hunted down and fired or noted that they are inelligible to serve on any technological case.
Contrary to another poster I don't believe that a lack of being knowledgeble in the field brings about true justice. It means that such a person could easily be confused and misled by the guck that the expert and lawyers present to them. It has nothing to do with bias for the justice side of it, it has to do with not being competant enough on the topic to resolve the issue. More time and money will be wasted in trial getting him a clue then actually on the legal matter at hand. How is that good for anybody? It isn't.
If you ask me this is one more sign that serious reform is needed in the judge system, and the whole "tenure for life" good old boys network of judges is the first target. Though not neccessarily true, they are the most likely to be completely ignorant of technology and to have never bothered to learn what the internet is. What's worse is I'd bet that these are same morons who are letting all the legislation regarding to technology through. I say let's test their general knowledge and have endorsements for highly technical cases involving things such as various facets technology. Why not, they have to study tax law if they want to deal with taxes, they should have to study technology and IP law if they want to rule on stuff with that. From the tests results issue endorsements; if they can't pass a test on technology they can't be assigned a case that hinges upon internet technology very simple.
Would you let a foot doctor give you advice on heart surgery? No. And it's not a superiority thing either, I wouldn't let the cardiac surgeon tell me how to treat my feet other. As long as the issue is dealt with respectfully and judges are forth coming let them stay in the system. But when judges are found to be presiding over cases they dont have the proper knowledge of that should be treated just as unethically as a lawyer neglecting to properly represent a client.
My real question, if he's forthcoming enough to admit his lack of knowledge why not be forthright enough to remove yourself from the case to be replaced by someone who knows it to speed up the case. In our country at least I have a right to a speedy trial, which definately does not include educating a judge on the internet.
It's far time judges, teachers and other public officials were held to the same standards that other workers are in regards to time. Time goes on and new technologies come along as well as new techniques and trends. To be a viable worker we have to keep up with these things, why don't they have to? The tenure systems are crippling us.
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
so perl then.
I'm all set.
In reality, I was asked if I was pre-law or a paralegal when I asked an attorney to review my response to Farmers C&D letter on my gripe site. I consider that to be high praise.
As to this judge, he should recuse himself from the case, but should also be lauded for admitting his limitations.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Ok, explain what a web site is to me. A complete, accurate, and comprehensive definition.
I bet I can shoot holes in at least your first attempt. If he knew the 'casual use definition' but realized this case depended on an exact technical definition, even a fairly experienced internet user would probably want to turn to experts.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Wow.. I can"t believe I could read that within a few seconds of seeing it for the first time. It says: I Am Not A Lawyer But I Have Studied Law And Work In The Field.
A sign I have been readin Slashdot too much
Nearly every reply I see here falls into one of two categories:
- "Wow, what a stupid judge! He doesn't know what a website is, like we teh smaert peoples do!!!"
- "No, the guy is wise to admit his limitation, and ask us, the smaert peoples who know what a website is, to tell him."
The tacit assumption is that it's perfectly clear what a "web site" is.Now, of course, I'm going to call that assumption into question. What is a web site? How do you tell where one web site ends, and where another starts? Is Geocities a web site? Is it rather a collection of web sites? Is it both, simultaneously? How does this decision interact with other legal reasoning that may be relevant to the case? What criteria ought to be applied in the kind of case he's handling?
The judge's supposed "admission" of "ignorance" could, for all that we know from TFA, not be because the judge has no concept of what a website is; it could be because his concept of what a website is is good enough for using, um, web sites, but not good enough for deciding this particular case.
Are you adequate?
The difference I have seen is that when gathering constraints, the CS is an optimist and the legal is a pessimist. What I mean is that when there are wholes in a spec/constraints/contract, I, as a designer, assume we'll all just use standards. Lawyers assume someone will use that hole to screw someone else. In design, there is normally an incentive to make it work, not to impede progress. In law, those holes in the constraints can be worth a lot of money.
Joe
Joe Batt Solid Design
I thought about that when I was "picking my profession", and I did talk to some lawyers and others I knew. At first it seemed a natural fit for me, but as I dug in deeper, I discovered that it wasn't as black and white as I'd hoped.
First, as another poster indicated, there's lots of "if then but else if" clauses. As black and white as a case my appear at first glance, the law is very gray. One can have two courts arrive at two entirely different conclusions on the same basic point, and then the appeals court decide to not take it up because the case isn't interesting. At that point, the implication is that both courts are right (or maybe they're both wrong), but it's no longer a simple truth. Don't even get me started on what one lawyer told me about the words "reasonable" and "prudent" in the context of any legal code.
Second, as strange as it may seem, a lot of practicing law is a matter of avoiding the real issue at hand. Take the SCO case - very little time has been spent addressing the case itself. Almost all the time has been spent on discovery motions, procedural arguments, evidence rules, etc. As a geek, I like to see results fairly quickly in a repeatable and consistent manner. If you told me that I had to write a perl program to compute the area of a triangle, I'd say cool. However, if you then told me that first I had to prove the theorem I'll use, but first I have to agree on the method in which my theorem will be proved, but first I have to decide whether the requester even has standing to ask me to write a program...you get the idea.
Third, I don't disagree on your point about geeks making good researchers. Certainly there's no question we're good at digging stuff up. What remains to be seen is whether we're good at digging everything up. This goes back to my other points. In a way, legal research is like the halting problem - you're never 100% confident that you've pulled every relevant law and ruling. Legal researchers also have to be completely free of bias. Most geeks I know (myself included) tend to feel very strongly on certain issues, and it's only natural that we'd favor facts that support our bias and disfavor those that don't. A good researcher can research the hell out of an issue that they vehemently oppose for the side that they despise. That takes something beyond being good at Google and Lexus.
No, that's not it...
Karma police, arrest this man. He talks in math. He buzzes like a fridge. He's like a detuned radio.
Again, you're misunderstanding me. Let me pose this to you in another way...
Let's say we have a man who, through no fault of his own, has managed to live right up to the present day without being exposed to the Internet. Now, he turns on the television to watch the news and the anchor mentions that "more information about today's top story can be found at our website." Isn't that the point where one would ask "What's a website? Where can I get this information of which they speak?"
Or, let's say that the same fellow never gets exposed to television. Instead, he picks up a newspaper to find out what's going on in the world (you know, something in which educated people tend to have an interest). Maybe the front page has a story about an Internet virus. "What's that? Can I catch Internet from casual contact?" Or, perhaps the paper suggests visiting - I know you're ahead of me here - their website. "What's a website and why would a newspaper have one?"
Do you see what I'm saying here? Anyone paying any attention at all to the outside world is going to have the Internet offered to them (for better or worse, advertising is everywhere), even if s/he has NO friends who mention websites to him/her (what are the chances, honestly?). A human with that much exposure to an alien concept is going to at least want to found out what all the hubbub is about. If s/he doesn't then s/he is purposely separating from the society and culture and, again, that is my objection. While it's true that judges don't have to be our "peers," it's also true that they should be a part of the society on which they're daily sitting in judgement, and they should want to know what said society is up to.
If you want recursion, then just pick a mathematician. *Every* single idea in current mathematics is derived from the basic axioms. And you can prove everything by these basic axioms. The Theorems and Lemmas are the recursive help tool that is used so we do not have to go to the basics all the time.
What Law has that Mathematics lacks is interpretation and intension. Maths have neither because everything is derived from the axioms. In Law, even the axioms (ie. the constitution or similar) are not exact.
I think I remember a teacher saying it can all be broken down to addition; because subtraction is just reverse addition, multiplication is just shorthand addition, and division is shorthand subtraction. There may have been more to the explanation but that was 10 years ago.
You consider it high praise to be told you think like a lawyer in training? I'm scared of you now.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Actually, this story got me to thinking of getting a law degree...
Die hard raving geek, with a libertarian streak, getting a law degree. Wonder what I'd do?
I'm thinking IP and (C) law reform?
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
> My opinion is that our minds are already geared for the IF definition THEN result,
> EXCEPT WHEN whatever kind of language that most laws that I've read are written in.
Legal and geek language are equally horrible. And if legalese is too difficult,
just translate it to plain ol' English:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# "legalese2en.pl" - Converts legalese to proper English - (c)2007 by Jochen L. Leidner
# $Id$
use strict; # stick to the law of the Camel
while (<>) {
s/a large number of/many/g;
s/a number of/some or several or many or something more precise/g;
s/accord/give/g;
s/accord respect to/respect/g;
s/acquire/get/g;
s/additional/more/g;
s/additionally/also/g;
s/adjacent to/next to or near/g;
s/advert to/mention/g;
s/afforded/given/g;
s/aforementioned/often best omitted/g;
s/ambit/reach or scope/g;
s/any and all/all/g;
s/approximately/about/g;
s/ascertain/find out/g;
s/assist/help/g;
s/at present/now/g;
s/at the place/where/g;
s/at the present time/now/g;
s/at this point in time/now or currently or some such/g;
s/at this time/now or currently or some such/g;
s/attempt/try/g;
s/because of the fact that/because/g;
s/cease/stop/g;
s/cease and desist/stop/g;
s/circumstances in which/when or where/g;
s/cognizant of/aware of or knows/g;
s/commence/start/g;
s/conceal/hide/g;
s/concerning the matter of/about/g;
s/consensus of opinion/consensus/g;
s/consequence/result/g;
s/contiguous to/next to/g;
s/demonstrate/show/g;
s/desire/want/g;
s/despite the fact that/despite or though/g;
s/does not operate to/does not/g;
s/donate/give/g;
s/due to the fact that/because/g;
s/during the course of/during/g;
s/during the time that/while/g;
s/echelon/level/g;
s/elucidate/explain or perhaps clarify/g;
s/endeavor/try/g;
s/evince/show/g;
s/excessive number of/too many/g;
s/exclusively/only/g;
s/exit/leave/g;
s/facilitate/help/g;
s/firstly/first/g;
s/secondly/second/g;
s/for the duration of/during or while/g;
s/for the purpose of doing/to do/g;
s/for the reason that/because/g;
s/forthwith/immediately/g;
s/frequently/often/g;
s/fundamental/basic/g;
s/has a negative impact/hurts or harms/g;
s/(I would argue that|it is arguable that|it could be argued
I don't think he should step down. As a judge, he is an expert in the law; that is why he is there. I would expect that he has probably seen hundreds of cases where he doesn't understand the terminology - he cannot be expected to be an expert in every subject.
As a judge, he is there to apply his understanding of the law to the case; if he doesn't understand a term that is important to the case, he should be expected to admit it and to find out about it, but not to hand the case over (and cause it to be restarted) every time he hears something that he doesn't understand.
It's like me, a web developer, being asked to make a website about law. I don't understand law, I don't understand the terms, but I am an expert in making websites. I am there to apply my understanding of how to make a website; if I don't understand a legal term that is important to the website, I should be expected to admit it and find out about it, but not to resign every time I hear something that I don't understand.
Sure, this time it may be that he doesn't understand what a website or a forum is - if that was someone in the computing world then yes, they should step down. But this is the whole point of having professionals - acknowledge that there are people who understand more than you, and that you need to go and ask them for help so that you can do your job properly. A lot of people I know in the computing world could learn a valuable lesson from this judge.
You just described one of my friends. He's upset he didn't get into Stanford for law school and therefore can't study with Lessig.
All that stuff up there with the if/then/except/unless/provided is that you need a really BIG truth table or a well-nested set of if or switch statements and lots of continue & break.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
Of course, in the old days there was GOTO as well. Of course no-one writes laws like that these days...
-1 not first post
Oh yeah? Prove it.
I don't think he should step down, either, but it does raise interesting questions about legal process in the UK: the government have argued that certain high-profile cases (typically involving complex fraud) should not be subject to jury trial "because the jurors wouldn't understand the complex issues at stake". If judges are equally deficient in understanding, then really - what's the point of removing an ancient right to trial by jury?
This is where the serious fun begins.
He is a judge, and does not need to know about IT. He would probably know what a car was, because I imagine that either he drives one, or is driven in one. He has probably heard of a computer, his secretary probably uses one, he has no doubt heard of the internet and websites, and has probably seen the odd URL or two. However, I wouldn't expect him to understand what they were, and would far rather he admit it than stumble on blindly. Being out of touch with IT just means that he has better or more important things to do than use computers; granted, a foreign concept to most of us on Slashdot, but many people in other industries get by just fine without using anything more complicated than a telephone - that's what secretaries are for.
By asking for an exact definition of a website, it does not preclude his ability as a judge to pass judgement on the case; it merely builds a solid base of understanding (for judge and jury alike) for the expert witness to build upon when they call him later in the week, and demonstrates the sensible and professional attitude of the judge. It is far better to be ruled by men who know their limits, than men who declare that the internet is made of tubes.