Innocence abroad
We first learned from Reason's Brickbats page but confirmed on the site maintained by the Police Superintendents Association of England and Wales and on the World Socialist Web Site (how's that for broad-based web investigation?) a bit that has gotten little play in the mainstream British press: Prime Minister Tony Blair has proposed law reforms which include a modification of the ancient prohibition against double jeopardy. The PSAEW site merely mentions in passing that Blair included "a move to reform the 'Double Jeopardy' law". The WSWS site is more explicit in saying that a Law Commission has recommended changing the rule for murder prosecutions, and has proposed that the change be retrospectively applied, apparently specifically to permit a retrial in a notorious case in which the prosecution bungled the trial of three defendants charged with the murder of a black man in a racist attack in 1993, leading to a judge's decision to dismiss the charges outright.
The Observer says that Blair believes in general that the criminal justice system should be 'reweighted' in favour of the prosecution, and that several of the proposed reforms are geared toward that goal. (One may need to use a grain of salt in reading their papers, as with ours.)
The well-known phrase "hard cases make bad law" comes to mind. That is a paraphrase of a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., writing in dissent in the 1904 Northern Securities case, and it bears quoting in full because it is as pertinent here as it is over there in these times:
"Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment. These immediate interests exercise a kind of hydraulic pressure which makes what previously was clear seem doubtful, and before which even well settled principles of law will bend."
7:53:35 PM 
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