Tag: nyst legal
  • Criminal Law, Jonathan Nyst

Hard Cases

The familiar legal adage "Hard cases make bad law" dates back at least as far as the early 1800s. It points to the danger of reacting to an extreme case by making a general, harsh and inflexible law to cover all cases. Wisdom dictates, the adage suggests, that laws are better drafted to target the average - and therefore more common – cases, rather than the extreme ones.
  • Human Rights, Nicola Ellis

Still Sorry

Between 1905 and 1970, generations of First Nations children were forcibly removed from their families, under a policy of so-called ‘protection.’ The 1995 Bringing Them Home report estimated that between ten and thirty-three per cent of all First Nations children were taken from their loved ones.
  • Privacy

A Matter Of Privilege

Confidential communications between lawyers and their clients are sacrosanct. They are subject to legal professional privilege, which means they cannot be disclosed by anyone – including the lawyer – to anyone else - including the government, the courts, the police, or anyone at all - without the client’s express authorisation. That principle has been around for about 500 years, and remains a fundamental tenant of our legal system. But it has, at times, been sorely tested.
  • Brendan Nyst, Opinion

The Lucky Country

This week, as we paused to remember, on the 102nd Remembrance Day, those who fell in foreign fields to defend and preserve our liberties, hopefully we also reflected on a great deal more.
  • Alex Somers, Privacy

The Social Dilemma

The latest Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, serves up a thought-provoking critique of the unethical and largely unregulated tactics employed by social media platforms, namely surveillance capitalism and data mining, in order to exploit users for commercial benefit. The doco’s director, Jeff Orlowski, seeks to draw a causal link between the rise of these tactics in the 2010’s and broader social, political and economic concerns such as mental health issues, the spread of misinformation/conspiracy theories, and election tampering.
  • Brendan Nyst, Business, Commercial Law, Litigation

Covid Rental Relief

Perhaps not surprisingly, I've been deluged recently with enquiries from small business operators and commercial space landlords about rental relief in the time of COVID-19. For those affected, here's a quick snapshot of what's on offer.
  • Politics, Privacy, Technology

To D or Not To D

Last week was Privacy Awareness Week, which is a curious irony, given the current dilemma faced by millions of Australians – to download or not to download the Federal government's CovidSafe App.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Jonathan Nyst

Shortlisted For Criminal Law Gong

Nyst Legal Associate Jonathan Nyst was this week shortlisted as one of 10 finalists in the Criminal Law division of the national Lawyers Weekly 30 Under 30 Awards.
  • Alex Somers, Criminal Law

No Ordinary Time

It's sometimes said that one man's loss is another man's profit, and that's evidently true, even in these strange and troubled times. Just ask all those previously-struggling toilet paper and face mask makers. One curious example has even arisen in the criminal courts.
  • Dispute Resolution, Litigation, Navrinder Sathar, Opinion, Politics

People Power

For the past couple of months, I have been receiving messages and calls from concerned relatives and friends back home in Malaysia wanting to know whether I have been affected by the recent bushfires. Thankfully, like most Gold Coasters, I wasn’t physically confronted by the crisis,  but of course we have all been touched by the devastating news of loss and destruction suffered by so many around us. It is awful to think the fires have claimed lives, destroyed homes, impacted at least a billion animals, and laid to waste more than 25 million acres of land.
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion, Politics, Privacy

A Right To Know

Don’t you sometimes miss the good, old-fashioned Moral High Ground? As a post-war baby, the world I was born into seemed a brave and righteous one. Our fathers had just fought and died to free us all from fascism and oppression. The world had paid a terrible price, but it was all worth it.  In the end we won, and the Bad Guys lost.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Opinion

The Means To The End

About ten years before the birth of Christ the great Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso, in his collection of epistolary poems known as The Heroides, coined the Latin phrase Exitus acta probat, which translates roughly to the often-quoted mantra ‘The end justifies the means’. It is a sentiment celebrated by the Italian Renaissance writer Niccolo Machiavelli in the 1500’s and enthusiastically embraced by a long list of authoritarian dictators throughout history. Thankfully, it has no place in the criminal justice system of any modern western democracy.