Anybody there?

[Mark Lomas]

The Financial Times came to a similar conclusion regarding Scottish law.

While reporting on the recent Court of Session ruling, which the government
appealed to the Supreme Court and lost, the FT sought legal advice on what
might follow.
It concluded that if either a statute or a court ruling obliges somebody to
sign or lodge a document, the Court of Session has the power to rule that
it has been done -
the court does not need to rule that it should be done.

That brings two thoughts to mind:
1) a signature in Scotland is like Schroedinger's cat - a document with no
visible signature may become signed if you ask the Court of Session whether
it was signed.
2) is it perjury to tell a court that you did not sign a document after the
Court of Session rules that you did?

Many news sources have reported that Boris Johnson has sent an unsigned
letter to the European Commission.
If the Court of Session were to rule that the Benn Act requires a signature
then those reports would retrospectively become untrue.

Conclusion: I suggest that Boris also signed the document yesterday in
Scotland, provided someone later asks the Court of Session whether he did.


On Sun, 20 Oct 2019 at 06:44, Peter Gutmann <pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz>
wrote:

> Clive D.W. Feather <clive at davros.org> writes:
>
> >Arguably, since the law requires the letter to be written, it could be
> deemed
> >to have been written.
>
> The Australians have this set up much better:
>
>   [...] the Commissioner may [...]:
>
>   (b)  treat a particular event that did not actually happen as having
> happened and, if appropriate, treat the event as:
>
>     (i)  having happened at a particular time; and
>
>     (ii)  having involved particular action by a particular entity; and
>
>   (c)  treat a particular event that actually happened as:
>
>     (i)  having happened at a time different from the time it actually
> happened; or
>
>     (ii)  having involved particular action by a particular entity
> (whether or not the event actually involved any action by that entity).
>
> So Boris definitely wrote the letter and signed it, yesterday, at noon.
> At least in Australia.
>
> Peter.
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/ukcrypto/attachments/20191020/8e20219c/attachment.html>