Re: Copyright

["The Meikles" <action1@telusplanet.net>]

Jeff Blakeney wrote

> It is not up to a single judge to instigate change in the legal system
> by ignoring an unjust law so he must uphold that law until such time
> as it gets changed.  It may be unfortunate at times but that is the
> way the system works.  If the system didn't work that way, judges
> would have too much power and could make rulings on their own which
> could cause a lot more problems than we have now.


Hi Jeff

NOT that I want to open a can of worms here, but as we're both Canucks, I
can and will use Canadian examples to prove that the above statement is not
entirely accurate. If a Judge feels that a law violates the constitution he
can find a law in violation and dismiss the case against a person charged
with violating that law. An example of this happening here in Canada is the
Judge that originally threw oout the case against the man charge with child
pornography possesion. The judge deemed that the Law against possesing child
porn provide an unconstitional amount of power to the authorities in the
area of search and seisure, thus the law was ilegal itself. This has left
the Canadian government scrambling thrying to draft new legislation that
will deal with the problem, but remain constitutional. A judge can also set
aside a law that he feels is unjust in specific cases, which can and does
set presidence in future cases. The example for this one directly effects
me. I raise poultry and every province has marketing boards protected by law
that governs the numbers that a producer can produce ( called quotas ). In
1996 a farmer took the Quebec Turkey Marketing Board to court. The judge
ruled that Marketing boards worked against the very principle of a free
market economy and thus he couldn't enforce the law in this case. The
Marketing board appealed his decission, but the Quebec Court of Appeal
upheld his decission. Now does this mean I can raisse as many turkeys as I
want without fear of charges. No but it does mean that if I were to be
charged presidence has been set and the likelihood of lossing my case has
greatly deminissed. These are not isolated cases and I can quote many
examples if you'd like such as the cases against the Canada Taxation Act,
aginst the Canada Wheat Board etc. The Canadian system of justice and the
American one are very similar in how they function on the basic level and
there are many examples of judges ruling contrary to the law south of the
49th as well.

Sheane