I Am The Scourge Of Sadomasochists!

This pretending to be a lawyer thing seems to be working out. Today was the quarter-finals of the senior mooting competition. I had to argue that this guy who carved his initials on his girlfriend’s butt couldn’t try to get out of his conviction by arguing that she’d consented to it.

The leading case about this in English law is about a group of sadomasochists who got convicted for assault despite the fact that all their “victims” had consented to their acts. One of the arguments I made during the moot was that legalization of sadomasochism should be done by Parliament and not the courts. I’d been planning to refer the judge to this quote from one of the Law Lords:

“If it is to be decided that such activities as the nailing by A of B’s foreskin or scrotum to a board or the insertion of hot wax into C’s urethra followed by the burning of his penis with a candle or the incising of D’s scrotum with a scalpel to the effusion of blood are injurious neither to B, C and D nor to the public interest then it is for Parliament with its accumulated wisdom and sources of information to declare them to be lawful.” (Lord Jauncey, R v Brown)

But he said he got the point early on, without me needing to refer him to judgments, so unfortunately I didn’t get to read that quote out.

Anyway, I got through to the semi-finals of the competition. I’m glad because I think I deserved it, but annoyed that I have to keep at this activity which I don’t particularly enjoy.

Thanks go out to Russ for subjecting himself to one and a half hours of the tedium that is a moot – I appreciated the support.

Thanks do not go out to my alarm clocks, which failed to work this morning resulting in my awakening in absolute panic at 2 pm, with only one third of the moot prepared.