If the lawyer failed to make a solid case, but the jury were impressed, then the judge should step in as a course of duty.
The judge is welcome to direct the jury during the case, yes. Anyone found guilty or losing a civil case is also welcome to appeal. A JNOV is neither. A JNOV is a judge being persuaded to change his mind, deciding after the finding that the jury should have been directed, but without the requirement for the party previously judged against to present a proper appeal to a better authority. It's essentially a way of fudging the system by making a ruling at a particular level non-binding.
Sometimes proof differs from conviction, and arguments that impress a jury may be, in fact, riddled with holes.
This is the purpose of directing a jury. In the event that a jury is directed to give a not guilty verdict and gives a guilty verdict, a JNOV may be appropriate (but only then). This is not what happened. If the jury is sufficiently swayed and the defence considers that the judge should have directed a not-guilty verdict then something has already gone seriously wrong, and a full appeal is entirely appropriate. Not just a casual changing of mind by the court.
why would a judge risk a stable, well-paying job, his freedom, and his legacy, for a few mac pros?
It is unlikely that he would. Any reward would have to be far greater, and you're being deliberately obtuse. Of course, no organisation has ever managed to bribe a judge with the prospect of current or future reward, so I guess I should apologise for making such an insane implication.
If there was no substantiating evidence for the validity of his opinion, such a void of evidence would be apparent to anyone
We could equally ask: if no reasonable jury could have found Apple liable, why did the first judge not either throw out the case or direct the jury? Such a void of evidence would be apparent to anyone.
Who are "they"? How was the information on what "they" think collected? How does "they" saying "please invade us" mean it's OK to do that, regardless of the opinion of others within the invading and the invaded country? Do you understand how a constitutional republic works?
First time I've heard that, but it could be true. Could you please provide your various sources - i.e. multiple independent impartial observers - making sure that categories match up and are not explained by other geopolitical factors (e.g. reduction in infant mortality would not count as due to regime change unless we have an argument for ignoring easing of US sanctions against Iraq). Thanks.
But I guess someone with an oddly emotional slant to their argument might look at a picture of a person who has been executed for X in a way that damages their face and not mention that they were killed for X, merely that they were disfigured - something which on its own happens to many people for various things in every country, often with a legal system set up to make it effectively permissible. Were you being intellectually dishonest or just emotional?
Either way, unless you're discussing accidental disfigurement, we're certainly talking about abuse.
Is this one of those discussions which hinges on a true Scotsman^Wdemocracy fallacy? In what way does pre-1832 Britain have "no" experience with democracy, and in what way does Massachusetts have "continuously operated" democracy from 1780? Who must be in the electorate and what gets to be voted for before your simplistic binary transition from "no democracy" to "true democracy"?
(To cut this short, you can imagine listing the features you don't like about pre-1832 British democracy, and imagine my listing what makes 1780 Massachusetts democracy somehow not count. I thought you'd like to know that I shall in particular be focusing on women, the poll tax, and the interactions between the two.)
Sometimes. And sometimes you even charge and convict. As do all the countries you're so obviously prejudiced against. Sometimes.
In the middle east crowds of people will stone a woman to death for adultery.
And that's bad. And I'm glad it's more rare in the US than in, say, Saudi Arabia. But it's also a straw man. The discussion was about people being abused, not the death penalty - a penalty every civilised nation has already done away with.
And to speak to your other completely unrelated point, everyone in the US has the CHANCE to succeed
Everyone everywhere has a chance to succeed. It's just that the hurdles to success are different everywhere. One day, maybe citizens of the US will look back and understand that there's othing new or special about their idea.
The definition's changed over the years. In support of my usage: (i) The British traditionally considered it part of the Middle East as distinct from the Near East and the Far East; (ii) the US first used the term with eastern limit up to and not including Pakistan (Eisenhower Doctrine); and (iii) current US geopolitical dabbling refers to a "Greater Middle East" which includes Afghanistan (not having an official definition for "Middle East" on its own).
it is in Asia
But everything in that region is either in Europe, in Africa or in Asia. Sigh, I must never get into a geography argument with an American AC.
(1) Details on the system of appointment to government do not determine the length of life of a country and its culture, and the fact that you think it does says quite a lot about the scope of your understanding of culture;
(2) If the Reform Act of 1832 determines when the UK government came into existence (what is wrong with you?), then the US did not exist in any meaningful sense before the civil rights movement of the 1960s ended apartheid in the South.
That's not how culture works. You can't just take a few men and women from one country, have them reproduce to form a new society in a new country, and expect the culture of the old place to be reflected in the new. It wouldn't even work if early US immigrants were representative of their former nations, which they certainly weren't: you're lacking everything from climate to system of government to city layout to system of education to, well, everything except a bit of genetics and some ideas.
This doesn't mean the US is inherently bad, just that it's young.
Yet me just point out that countries have powers and constraints not rights
Quite. Yet the US acts as if it considers itself to have some right.
What makes you think the previous poster was being a hypocrite or coward?
Because, in traditional apologetic fallacy, he responds to a criticism of an oppressor with a criticism about a subset of the targets of oppression.
I wonder why you thought it would go away with the British empire when there were perhaps a hundred or so other countries practicing it at the time.
The setting of the British empire coincided with the start of an information age and a generally highly educated population (by contrast with earlier centuries). I was dreaming that this would have made it harder to use a lie to justify one's behaviour - so America would just say "we're doing this for profit" or whatever.
I find it a wee bit hypocritical to wring one's hands over the US's role as "world policeman," while ignoring that there is some need for a world policeman and the absence of anyone better to fill the role.
You may need to check the definition of "hypocrisy". Even if I thought there was a need for a world policeman - which I don't - it wouldn't make me hypocritical to state that the US shouldn't be claiming that it's in Afghanistan for humanitarian reasons.
I agree. Have you seen the pictures of the women disfigured because someone accused them of cheating or stealing? Or heard stories of the families now left without a husband because the Taliban either killed or forcefully recruited him?
Try absorbing less knowledge via propaganda and walk around your country a bit. Firstly, spousal abuse happens everywhere, including on your street right now. Next, put less emphasis on the tourist spots and more on the poverty spots. Gang violence, while always more prevalent when there is a perceived oppressor to fight, produces life expectancies even in the US which you may have already exceeded. "But it's a choice in the US to join!" I hear you cry - just as the cry of America has always been that failure is a choice, and everyone has the freedom to succeed if only they try and dream just a little more. What bullshit. Yes, every genius and every atlas has the choice to defeat someone who dares to try to oppress him. But not everyone is either genius or atlas - you and I rely on good fortune.
I'm sure the little kid in Africa who no longer has AIDS or Malaria doesn't mind us being there.
Educating people to prepare malaria vaccines or HIV medication (essentially: not imposing the artificial construction that is intellectual property law) is so far removed from a military invasion that I can only assume you yourself know how difficult it is to justify US military behaviour and are clutching at straws out of some sense of guilt.
Dude, it's OK. You're not being blamed personally. Use what freedom you have to speak out against your government where it does wrong.
It is the cold comfort that nothing has changed; that the cycle of civilisation remains in force.
In other words, it is better than finding that technology has enabled one empire to become unconquerable. With change comes turmoil, but turmoil preserves freedom.
the progenitors of the biggest genocides in human history(who have yet to apologize for any of them btw),
I'm sorry for every time I have contributed to this country which still does some awful things to its own people and to foreigners. I very much try to be productive while minimising the support I give to my government and businesses which act on its behalf. I'm too young to have been involved in some of the popular[tm] genocides you're probably thinking of ("biggest" is an ill-defined and unhelpful term), so I am not sure it has any meaning for me to apologise for them.
Just to clear things up: it's wrong when the British/French/Spanish/Dutch/etc. empire did it, and it's wrong now the American Empire's doing it.
The difference is that Europe has learnt some (not enough - and always dangerously close to forgetting it) humility while the US is still playing catchup. This is as you'd expect: Europe's had quite a few centuries' head start and two recent world wars to shake us up.
What does any of this have to do with the US thinking it has the right to act as world policeman?
The US is not in Afghanistan to liberate the people any more than the Soviets were there to liberate it from Western Capitalist Imperialists[tm]. And the US didn't support religious fundamentalism after (and before) that to liberate Afghanistan from Godless Communist Interantionalists[tm]. Such wars are about one superpower or another fighting for control of resources and strategic locations, as well as securing funding for the corporations of which politicians and their donors are shareholders. You know it; I know it.
Be a soldier on the offensive if you want, but don't be such a damn coward about your reasons. I'd hoped hypocrisy died with the setting of the sun on the British empire, but it seems much of the US are no better.
What happened here is a Judgment Notwithstanding Verdict[tm], aka JNOV. It's not an appeal and it's not often used. Its reasoning is as follows (no, I'm not putting a cynical bent on it): no reasonable jury could have made that verdict, therefore the jury is unreasonable, therefore its finding is invalid, therefore I shall override its verdict.
Put another way, the judge probably has a stack of Mac Pros sitting outside his office right now.
Anyone who talks in terms of some identified "gifted" being deserving of resources vs "wasting them on window-lickers" qualifies as a "window-licker". It's fortunate that I don't subscribe to the same quasi-fascist notion of humanity's collective purpose that you do, otherwise I'd have to condemn you as a beta or worse, couch slug.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing new in computer engineering since 1980. Prove me wrong.
If the lawyer failed to make a solid case, but the jury were impressed, then the judge should step in as a course of duty.
The judge is welcome to direct the jury during the case, yes. Anyone found guilty or losing a civil case is also welcome to appeal. A JNOV is neither. A JNOV is a judge being persuaded to change his mind, deciding after the finding that the jury should have been directed, but without the requirement for the party previously judged against to present a proper appeal to a better authority. It's essentially a way of fudging the system by making a ruling at a particular level non-binding.
Sometimes proof differs from conviction, and arguments that impress a jury may be, in fact, riddled with holes.
This is the purpose of directing a jury. In the event that a jury is directed to give a not guilty verdict and gives a guilty verdict, a JNOV may be appropriate (but only then). This is not what happened. If the jury is sufficiently swayed and the defence considers that the judge should have directed a not-guilty verdict then something has already gone seriously wrong, and a full appeal is entirely appropriate. Not just a casual changing of mind by the court.
why would a judge risk a stable, well-paying job, his freedom, and his legacy, for a few mac pros?
It is unlikely that he would. Any reward would have to be far greater, and you're being deliberately obtuse. Of course, no organisation has ever managed to bribe a judge with the prospect of current or future reward, so I guess I should apologise for making such an insane implication.
If there was no substantiating evidence for the validity of his opinion, such a void of evidence would be apparent to anyone
We could equally ask: if no reasonable jury could have found Apple liable, why did the first judge not either throw out the case or direct the jury? Such a void of evidence would be apparent to anyone.
It would have been sufficient to type, "I don't have any credible sources. I was making it up, sorry."
one collector's sets within part 2 of that video
Who are "they"? How was the information on what "they" think collected? How does "they" saying "please invade us" mean it's OK to do that, regardless of the opinion of others within the invading and the invaded country? Do you understand how a constitutional republic works?
First time I've heard that, but it could be true. Could you please provide your various sources - i.e. multiple independent impartial observers - making sure that categories match up and are not explained by other geopolitical factors (e.g. reduction in infant mortality would not count as due to regime change unless we have an argument for ignoring easing of US sanctions against Iraq). Thanks.
But I guess someone with an oddly emotional slant to their argument might look at a picture of a person who has been executed for X in a way that damages their face and not mention that they were killed for X, merely that they were disfigured - something which on its own happens to many people for various things in every country, often with a legal system set up to make it effectively permissible. Were you being intellectually dishonest or just emotional?
Either way, unless you're discussing accidental disfigurement, we're certainly talking about abuse.
Democracy comes from the people, not from the barrel of a gun.
The current US relationship with China couldn't have come without a bit of crudely adopted Maoism.
Is this one of those discussions which hinges on a true Scotsman^Wdemocracy fallacy? In what way does pre-1832 Britain have "no" experience with democracy, and in what way does Massachusetts have "continuously operated" democracy from 1780? Who must be in the electorate and what gets to be voted for before your simplistic binary transition from "no democracy" to "true democracy"?
(To cut this short, you can imagine listing the features you don't like about pre-1832 British democracy, and imagine my listing what makes 1780 Massachusetts democracy somehow not count. I thought you'd like to know that I shall in particular be focusing on women, the poll tax, and the interactions between the two.)
We arrest people here for spousal abuse.
Sometimes. And sometimes you even charge and convict. As do all the countries you're so obviously prejudiced against. Sometimes.
In the middle east crowds of people will stone a woman to death for adultery.
And that's bad. And I'm glad it's more rare in the US than in, say, Saudi Arabia. But it's also a straw man. The discussion was about people being abused, not the death penalty - a penalty every civilised nation has already done away with.
And to speak to your other completely unrelated point, everyone in the US has the CHANCE to succeed
Everyone everywhere has a chance to succeed. It's just that the hurdles to success are different everywhere. One day, maybe citizens of the US will look back and understand that there's othing new or special about their idea.
The definition's changed over the years. In support of my usage:
(i) The British traditionally considered it part of the Middle East as distinct from the Near East and the Far East;
(ii) the US first used the term with eastern limit up to and not including Pakistan (Eisenhower Doctrine); and
(iii) current US geopolitical dabbling refers to a "Greater Middle East" which includes Afghanistan (not having an official definition for "Middle East" on its own).
it is in Asia
But everything in that region is either in Europe, in Africa or in Asia. Sigh, I must never get into a geography argument with an American AC.
Your point is well made, and is the "not enough" I was talking about. It's true that we're becoming more like a little America.
(And France hates to have departed this status, which explains partly why it shakes its fist across the Atlantic in hypocritical defiance so often.)
It might cost you, the average American taxpayer. But the war isn't being fought on your behalf. What did you expect?
(1) Details on the system of appointment to government do not determine the length of life of a country and its culture, and the fact that you think it does says quite a lot about the scope of your understanding of culture;
(2) If the Reform Act of 1832 determines when the UK government came into existence (what is wrong with you?), then the US did not exist in any meaningful sense before the civil rights movement of the 1960s ended apartheid in the South.
No, the argument is that the loss of colonies and two recent world wars have made Europe more humble.
Failure -> experience -> humility.
It will happen to the US too. It's just a standard sequence in any human development and you're not immune to it.
tl;dr Europe didn't choose to lose their colonies as a result of becoming humble, strawman /b/tard.
That's not how culture works. You can't just take a few men and women from one country, have them reproduce to form a new society in a new country, and expect the culture of the old place to be reflected in the new. It wouldn't even work if early US immigrants were representative of their former nations, which they certainly weren't: you're lacking everything from climate to system of government to city layout to system of education to, well, everything except a bit of genetics and some ideas.
This doesn't mean the US is inherently bad, just that it's young.
Yet me just point out that countries have powers and constraints not rights
Quite. Yet the US acts as if it considers itself to have some right.
What makes you think the previous poster was being a hypocrite or coward?
Because, in traditional apologetic fallacy, he responds to a criticism of an oppressor with a criticism about a subset of the targets of oppression.
I wonder why you thought it would go away with the British empire when there were perhaps a hundred or so other countries practicing it at the time.
The setting of the British empire coincided with the start of an information age and a generally highly educated population (by contrast with earlier centuries). I was dreaming that this would have made it harder to use a lie to justify one's behaviour - so America would just say "we're doing this for profit" or whatever.
I find it a wee bit hypocritical to wring one's hands over the US's role as "world policeman," while ignoring that there is some need for a world policeman and the absence of anyone better to fill the role.
You may need to check the definition of "hypocrisy". Even if I thought there was a need for a world policeman - which I don't - it wouldn't make me hypocritical to state that the US shouldn't be claiming that it's in Afghanistan for humanitarian reasons.
I agree. Have you seen the pictures of the women disfigured because someone accused them of cheating or stealing? Or heard stories of the families now left without a husband because the Taliban either killed or forcefully recruited him?
Try absorbing less knowledge via propaganda and walk around your country a bit. Firstly, spousal abuse happens everywhere, including on your street right now. Next, put less emphasis on the tourist spots and more on the poverty spots. Gang violence, while always more prevalent when there is a perceived oppressor to fight, produces life expectancies even in the US which you may have already exceeded. "But it's a choice in the US to join!" I hear you cry - just as the cry of America has always been that failure is a choice, and everyone has the freedom to succeed if only they try and dream just a little more. What bullshit. Yes, every genius and every atlas has the choice to defeat someone who dares to try to oppress him. But not everyone is either genius or atlas - you and I rely on good fortune.
I'm sure the little kid in Africa who no longer has AIDS or Malaria doesn't mind us being there.
Educating people to prepare malaria vaccines or HIV medication (essentially: not imposing the artificial construction that is intellectual property law) is so far removed from a military invasion that I can only assume you yourself know how difficult it is to justify US military behaviour and are clutching at straws out of some sense of guilt.
Dude, it's OK. You're not being blamed personally. Use what freedom you have to speak out against your government where it does wrong.
Are you arguing that the US is in Afghanistan out of love for oppressed Afghan women or something?
It is the cold comfort that nothing has changed; that the cycle of civilisation remains in force.
In other words, it is better than finding that technology has enabled one empire to become unconquerable. With change comes turmoil, but turmoil preserves freedom.
the progenitors of the biggest genocides in human history(who have yet to apologize for any of them btw),
I'm sorry for every time I have contributed to this country which still does some awful things to its own people and to foreigners. I very much try to be productive while minimising the support I give to my government and businesses which act on its behalf. I'm too young to have been involved in some of the popular[tm] genocides you're probably thinking of ("biggest" is an ill-defined and unhelpful term), so I am not sure it has any meaning for me to apologise for them.
Just to clear things up: it's wrong when the British/French/Spanish/Dutch/etc. empire did it, and it's wrong now the American Empire's doing it.
The difference is that Europe has learnt some (not enough - and always dangerously close to forgetting it) humility while the US is still playing catchup. This is as you'd expect: Europe's had quite a few centuries' head start and two recent world wars to shake us up.
What does any of this have to do with the US thinking it has the right to act as world policeman?
The US is not in Afghanistan to liberate the people any more than the Soviets were there to liberate it from Western Capitalist Imperialists[tm]. And the US didn't support religious fundamentalism after (and before) that to liberate Afghanistan from Godless Communist Interantionalists[tm]. Such wars are about one superpower or another fighting for control of resources and strategic locations, as well as securing funding for the corporations of which politicians and their donors are shareholders. You know it; I know it.
Be a soldier on the offensive if you want, but don't be such a damn coward about your reasons. I'd hoped hypocrisy died with the setting of the sun on the British empire, but it seems much of the US are no better.
...who does not think that the USA is an evil empire, and take consolation only in knowing that it is also a dying empire?
Get the hell out of the Middle East, USA. Stop killing people. Sort out your shit at home for your own sake.
What happened here is a Judgment Notwithstanding Verdict[tm], aka JNOV. It's not an appeal and it's not often used. Its reasoning is as follows (no, I'm not putting a cynical bent on it): no reasonable jury could have made that verdict, therefore the jury is unreasonable, therefore its finding is invalid, therefore I shall override its verdict.
Put another way, the judge probably has a stack of Mac Pros sitting outside his office right now.
Anyone who talks in terms of some identified "gifted" being deserving of resources vs "wasting them on window-lickers" qualifies as a "window-licker". It's fortunate that I don't subscribe to the same quasi-fascist notion of humanity's collective purpose that you do, otherwise I'd have to condemn you as a beta or worse, couch slug.