March 24, 2004

Best of the Comments forum

Ulpiano: Remember when I mentioned that the old Supreme Court in the IVth Republic, when they wanted to modify previous judicial precedents on something, used to say "penetrada la Sala de graves dudas, pasa a cambiar su criterio en los siguientes términos"?

Well, in this Vth Republic this isn't even necessary. Instead of saying: penetrada la Sala de graves dudas, from now on will be also available to temporary decisions, the Constitutional Chamber rather said the following contradictio in terminis: considering that our own precedents say that the recurso de revision is only available against definitive decisions, this decision of the Electoral Chamber which is now being anulled, although temporary, is a definitive decision. A pesar de ser una decisión temporal, es definitiva, y por lo tanto procede su revisión. It's the climax of the absurd.
Ulpiano | Email | 03.24.04 - 7:50 pm | #

Andrés: Welcome to the results of mixing Machiavelli with Kafka, Cantinflas, Orwell, Corín Tellado, Ché Guevara and Krazy Kat! We are screwed, guys.

I´m starting to feel there are NO literary references whatsoever to start to describe this madness! Hope I had money to spend five years in research and writing this novel. It would be not only a hit, but such a blow to Western Culture. I mean, it would be like presenting Man: "The beauty of the World, the parangon of animals" with a twisted mirror made of it´s own excrement!

While I would suscribe Western (Greco-roman, not WASP) values every other day, I still think we are living in their derelicts. Respect for the law: ITS LETTER, NOT ITS SPIRIT.

A Chinese curse: "Should you live interesting times". A gipsy couse: "Should you see yourself among lawyers". The second is Roman in origin. They invented THE LAW.

The British/American system of "judging amongst equals" with twelve juries is of Medieval origin. (Do I need to explain the Christian metaphorical associations?) Our system, so Roman, has to do with the written word. So, in a country were illiteracy is as widespread as the sun, lawyers will always have the last word. Verbigratia, Iván Rincón.