Former Assistant Police Commissioner Clint Rickards has been granted the certificate of character he needs to be admitted to the bar as a lawyer.
And lawyers wonder why people make jokes about them.
UPDATE: Says Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn:
The New Zealand Law Society has decided that Clint Rickards is a "fit and proper person" to practice law. I can think of no better demonstration of the utter moral bankruptcy of the legal profession.
He's right you know. If this doesn't convince you then let HL Mencken make the argument:
All the extravagance and incompetence of our present Government is due, in the main, to lawyers, and, in part at least, to good ones. They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizens has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah jong factory, we'd be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half.
27 comments:
My initial thought was, yeah but the pack-raping shithead still has to get clients dumb enough to have him as their lawyer, then I realised he'll probably specialise in getting rapists off, given his inside knowledge.
Fuck the non-initiation of force, I'd happily torture the bastard and leave him in pain for the rest of his days.
Still got some way to go before he is the same caliber as Mr Henry.
I agree with the Law Society that he should be allowed to practise law.
Fortunately in Common Law jurisdictions matters are not decided on the grounds that someone is not a nice person in the opinion of others, but on evidence and facts.
Always remember that two Juries found Rickard to be innocent and Nicholls to be a liar.
It's not what he was found innocent of that's in question, it's what he did that was admitted under oath.
He wasn't found guilty of rape,not, but the evidence revealed him to be guilty of being a disgusting human being who enjoyed abusing his power.
Just right for the job of lawyer, then.
As I said above, Peter, being a 'disgusting human being' is of no consequence in this Jurisdiction (and other Common Law nations).
I happen to think that is a good thing.
Let me put it this way...would you want Trotter and co judging you on what is written on this blog?
...a legal matter decided on their 'opinion' of you and what you stand for?
"He is a right wing fanatic and clearly guilty.."
Steady on, some lawyers aren't bad. In fact some are wonderful people who make the world a better place. :-)
How this guy gets in though is a mystery to me. There are plently who don't get their ticket for far less serious stains on their reputations. Perhaps it was the media spotlight that prompted the powers-that-be to err on the side of lenience? As has been noted, the presumption is he won't be carving out a career at the big end of town. Running rape trials certainly won't make him rich...
Always remember that two Juries found Rickard to be innocent and Nicholls to be a liar.
Excellent comment Elijah. The man is innocent period.
"Innocent" is not the same as "not guilty".
It will be interesting to see who will employ him. It's going to mean political capital for somebody ...
"Steady on, some lawyers aren't bad. In fact some are wonderful people who make the world a better place. :-)"
Okay, let's start a list of lawyers who don't fit Mencken's bill:
* Justin
* ...
Nathan, have the same decency as Elijah to distinguish being being innocent and being found innocent.
PC
Yup. I can think of some.
Anyway, there are people who are a disgrace no matter what profession they pollute with their disgusting presence. While it is correct that certain of the odious happen to have legal training, plenty do not. Similarly there are those of the legal profession who are honourable and have integrity. Those individuals certainly are not involved in the activities Mencken described (or involve themselves with questionable activites at all). By far the best policy is to judge each according to his or her attributes and not collectivise an entire population according to the worst of their number.
LGM
It's only 99% of lawyers who give the rest a bad name.
The issue is that it was over 20 years ago that he did this. Does he have remorse? Difficult to see.
Of course I have a law degree, haven't tried to practice though - it would of course corrupt me.
As a lawyer my response to this lot is that it is nobody's business but the Law Society's and Rickards'! There is a statutory criterion which he met,,,that is that!
In our system it is the legislature and its advisers, which makes laws, not practising lawyers!
The interesting debate will be whether Peters will seek to regain his right to practice. No longer a MP he'll need a job.
PC - What has happened to your promotion of people's freedom of association.
Point 1 - Why does he require a certificate to be a lawyer any way?
Point 2 - His customers (the market) will decide if he is fit and proper by engaging his services or they won't.
I don't need some useless body giving out weetbix certificates to make lawyers, lawyers
"The issue is that it was over 20 years ago that he did this."
The issue is not just twenty years ago.
He doesn't resile from associating with a chap convicted for perverting the course of justice: John Dewar, who perjured himself on Rickards' behalf.
And he hasn't resiled from associating with and supporting two convicted rapists -- and he still argues their trial was unfair.
So it's not just what he did twenty years ago, but what he has continued to do.
"PC - What has happened to your promotion of people's freedom of association.
Point 1 - Why does he require a certificate to be a lawyer any way?"
That's the only amusing part of this.
The Law Society seeks monopolistic protection over the profession because, it says, it needs to ensure that those who practice law are of good character.
And those claims can now be seen for what they are, which is horseshit.
There is no argument at all for restrictive trade associations such as the Law Society, the Architects Institute and so on. None at all. The argument for them is bankrupt.
And since their restrictive trade practices (protected by bloody parliament) affect all of us, that does make what they do my business, Chris.
PS: What profession, Chris, do you think makes up most of the legislature and their advisors?
PC: You confuse legally trained persons with practising lawyers. The former are those who work with the legislature, often pushing their personal interests via mindless elected members.
I do not see the Law Society seeking monopolistic protection over the profession. There are now only two reserved areas of work for lawyers.(Court work and Relationship Property advice.) NB There has never been a barrier to any party acting for him/herself in court matters,conveyancing etc.
A certification, whether it be for lawyers/electricians etc...is a method of ensuring rapid effective discipline. It is a method of avoiding fraud being perpetrated by its members and hence ensures that the non-initiation principle is preserved acutely.
While Rickards may be an unsavoury character this does not exclude him from performing to the best of his ability as a lawyer.If he feels his mates have been hard done by, then let him expound this strictly personal opinion. He has apparently satisfied the statutory criterion therefore any other determination is pointless. These cases cannot safely be resolved subjectively, a bastion of freedom must surely be an objective fulcrum of justice.
I do not discern a restrictive trade association in relation to the Law Society. It is a statutorily created system which it seems the legislature considers requisite to protect persons' interests. It may be that opening the market, as occurred on 1st August this year, will reveal that the perceived need to protect the public is illusory, but then again...?
The last time I read the word "monopolistic" it was at the sub-Standard! And that was only a very brief visit!
PC said...
perjured himself
PC what happened to the fairness of justice?
You said perjury, but the accuser Mrs. Nicholas was on (public) record (ie, Police record) to have perjured herself for making up stories?
I hope that Mr. Dewar pursued that perjury charge against Mr. Nicholas. This vile woman needs to be exposed?
Mr. Nicholas has been portrayed by the MSM as the darling (ie, she did no wrong) more like Obama. She has to be seen as the so called victim.
The public has been taken for a ride and you know when you have friends in the MSM, you don't need any effort to convince anyone that you're the victim, all you need to do is an Obama petrayal of yourself and the rest is history.
Don't you see that Mr. Rickards case is similar to what Mr. Karam is trying to persuade the general public about the innocence of David Bain? One has to rewrite the laws of Physics in order to claim that David Bain is innocent, because the Physical evidence against David is so overwhelming that one has to be a believer of psychic phenomena in order to believe that David Bain didn't kill his family. You know when one believes in psychic phenomena , then laws of physics is out, ie, reality and commonsense is out the window just to accommodate the impossibilities.
Mrs. Nicholas is a known liar (not my claim but it's in the media), so why don't you do some digging on Mrs. Nicholas's records rather than berating Mr. Rickards who ain't done anything wrong according to the law?
C'mon you can do better than that?
FF, may I recommend reading what's written, rather than what you'd like to have been written.
Your claims about Louise Nicholas are irrelevant to the issue at hand. So that cleans out four-fifths of your comment.
Which leaves this claim: "Mr. Rickards ... ain't done anything wrong according to the law?"
Yet as I pointed out above, that's not the issue.
The Law Society issued a letter upholding Rickards's good character, which we know from trial evidence is demonstrably untrue.
Let me repeat what I said above: "It's not what he was found innocent of that's in question, it's what he did that was admitted under oath.
He wasn't found guilty of rape,no, but the evidence revealed him to be guilty of being a disgusting human being who enjoyed abusing his power."
In fact, let me repeat what I said towards the end of the trial:
"On the face of it, not guilty on all counts seems the correct legal verdict. The moral verdict however looks a whole lot different. Rickard and co may not be guilty of rape, but they do seem guilty of being unpleasant and swinish human beings. Pigs. Not somebody you would want knocking at your door asking for a favour when you're home alone. Not someone you want as Police Commissioner...
It's now our own job to make our own moral judgement... He's been found not guilty of rape, but shown horribly guilty of poor judgement, awful behaviour, thuggish ignorance. Is that the sort of man you want as Police Commissioner? As the head of the only organisation in the country legally allowed to use force? And if Rickard became Commissioner, would you like to be one the police investigators who helped put together the prosecution's case against him?"
And here again as his jury was deliberating:
"...the evidence adduced in all cases (much of which was conceded under oath) has shown them thoroughly guilty of being complete and utter assholes -- of being, as I/S says, "downright predatory," and thoroughly disgusting human beings. And these men were policemen..."
And here again after the trial:
"Rickards did take the stand, and even at the distance offered by the filter of television, radio and newspaper his thuggishness and brutality was clear enough. Yet despite this obvious thuggishness, which we figure must surely have stared the jury in the face, the jury concluded that the facts did not support a conviction in this case. Such is their right. They saw all the facts that the prosecution had determined related to this case, and we didn't. Their verdict was given on the basis of those facts.
Justice, we have to say, has been done in this case, and on these charges.
But the character of all three men has now been laid bare for all time, and it's not a pretty sight. And that sort of character is itself is a life sentence."
Or it should be, if lawyers weren't such an easy lay.
Do you get my point now?
"A certification, whether it be for lawyers/electricians etc...is a method of ensuring rapid effective discipline. It is a method of avoiding fraud being perpetrated by its members..."
Sorry Chris, but this is horseshit on a high chair.
Certification (especially with the imprimatur of the legislature) is a primary form of trade restriction, a guild system set up to protect its members.
What else could it be?
Avoiding fraud? Protecting consumers? Don't make me laugh. I've seem examples from nearly every profession where the object of any inquiry is simply to protect the member from problems, not to protect the public from the fraudsters.
I'll give just one example, of a complaint brought to the NZ Institute of Architects of the clear plagiarism of one of its senior members, Simon Carnachan -- plagiarism that had earned the corrupt fraud a Gold Medal for design.
The subsequent inquiry was set up not to investigate the fraud, which was unquestionable, but to protect Simon (who used faked diaries to defend the claim), to suppress the complaint and to threaten the complainants (one of which was me).
So you'll forgive me if I don't take your argument seriously, Chris.
FF: the fairness of justice All very well, but we have a LEGAL system, not a justice system.
This vile woman needs to be exposed You're taking the piss, surely? Your nom-de-plume is very accurate.
Lest I be seen as sticking up for Nicholls because she's another female, I'm basing my thoughts about Rickard on the comments by police officers who've worked with him. He is in fact, a pack-raping piece of shit who boasted about it.
PC My take on the Law Society disciplinary process is that it is cannibalistic in that the finding of misconduct results in a severe penalty. I speak from both sides of the draw and cannot comment on the workings of any other profession. The penalties meted out by the Law Society are additional to those handed down by the courts.
The Law Society's findings are always client focussed. There is not a cabal of cronies running it. A suggestion of this ilk reminds me of the mutterings of the Clark/Anderton constituencies.
For the record, if Rickards asked me to hire him I'd say no!
Chris
You wrote: "I do not see the Law Society seeking monopolistic protection over the profession. There are now only two reserved areas of work for lawyers.(Court work and Relationship Property advice.) NB There has never been a barrier to any party acting for him/herself in court matters,conveyancing etc."
BUT and it is a big BUT, they do not allow one party to represent another UNLESS he or she is a member of the guild. That is, the ability for one party to represent another is completely excluded by monopoly priviledge- an enormous monopolistic barrier.
Oh dear.
LGM
"They" Who is "They"? Not the Law Society.
Monopolistic is not a term I'd employ when membership is compulsory.
Chris
The business of representing another party at law is a monopoly enjoyed by members of your guild. As you well know, if they detect a non-member plying the trade there are sanctions immediately taken. Such a person would be instantly ejected from the court room and face serious consequences.
Members of your profession have had a great deal of success at acquiring special protection and particular priviledge from government (populated by many lawyers at administrative and operational levels). By comparison industrial unions have never enjoyed anything like the same influence, power or closeness to government.
LGM
I have never known the Law Society to dismiss a non-lawyer from a courtroom. This is the task of the judges who relinquish their membership compulsorily on their ascendancy to the Bench.
The Society is neither a guild nor a trades union. If it were either, the antagonism toward it exhibited by many practitioners would not be publicly aired in the manner it is. The Clark/Anderton constituencies may well perceive membership as a privilege, it is not, it is an obligation. The inside of the Law Society resembles a cell more acutely than it does a suite!
If you believe the state doles out indiscriminate privileges to lawyers, I recommend you read the LCA and its attendant regulations which came into effect last August. The duties and obligations contained therein are numerous and hefty.
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