Dr. Peter Ridd writes on Facebook:
We just got notification that the High Court appeal hearing will be by the Full Court at 10:00am on Wednesday, 23 June 2021 in Court No. 1, Parkes Place, Canberra. My understanding is that appeals can be heard by between one to seven of the judges depending upon the perceived importance of the case. Ours is by the “Full Court” so it will likely be either five or seven judges. The hearing will be just one day.
The final judgement, would be handed down sometime after 23rd June.
For those who live close to Canberra, Court No. 1 is the large courtroom in the High Court complex so, even with covid restrictions, there should be plenty of room in the public gallery if you are interested. I’d certainly be delighted to meet any of you to thank you in person for your support.
I speak for many of us at WUWT in wishing the best of luck to Dr. Ridd in prevailing over the draconian “cancel culture” at James Cook University.
Good luck.
If luck has anything to do with it, the Good Luck.
Otherwise, I think the rational facts of Dr. Ridd’s case should win the day.
Let truth and science win out!
I don’t hold much faith in “high/supreme” courts these days but I wish Peter well.
Slightly off topic.
George Floyd was found to be hypoxic and to simultaneously have blood oxygen of 98%.
According to the medical literature – 98% is a normal blood oxygen level and therefore his efforts to breathe were effective.
Am I missing something?
I hope he’s hired Dennis Denuto from The Castle as his lawyer.
Don’t get too excited. Australia has no explicit protection of freedom of speech like we have in the U.S. Constitution, so it can be interpreted freely by the court. It could go either way.
The American Founders carefully considered natural rights inherent to every individual and protected them so government officials with tyrannical tendencies (a surprising number of them) could not restrict those rights. The freedom to believe, to express yourself, to protest peacefully, and to challenge the government were the first to be protected. An astonishingly small number of modern democratic governments have constitutional protections of these freedoms. Australia isn’t one of them.
Dr Ride
May the winds of open and fair minds, facts, truth and the scientific way blow through the #1 court on this important event.
With regards
Martin
Groklaw was a website devoted to legal issues especially SCO vs. The Whole World. Many of us saw those cases as an attempt to derail Linux. (It didn’t work. Android, based on Linux, leads Windows on device shipments by a wide margin.
The beauty of Groklaw was that it presented the court documents. You could know exactly what a court was being asked to decide and you could know exactly why a court decided as it did.
It’s fine to say that the Ridd case may be about free speech but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that the court is going to rule on something else altogether.
A quick web search didn’t find the court documents and that’s frustrating.
The fact that the High Court will hear the case as a Full court indeed means that they consider this to be an important decision for which a principle must be established.
good luck to Dr. Ridd. But why depend on luck? Borrow the technique of AlGore and turn the Courtroom into a polar outbreak (might need some insider help to adjust the air conditioning?).
I would be very surprised if Dr. Ridd wins. Decades of anti-union activity by the Australian governments and large companies have meant that large corporations including Universities
can fire people for almost anything. The case is almost certainly going to be decided on a technicality and my guess is that the University has written academic contracts in such a way
that they can always find a reason to fire somebody.
Hoping for a favourable outcome for Dr. Ridd
Its now in the diary
I would say
good luckto Peter . . .and I hope the judges all know about
historyMy support of Dr. Ridd is heartfelt. Science should not be a slave to politics.
Hoping for victory for actual science
Lately I have seen several YOUTUBE videos come out on the topic of “corals being much more resistant to climate change than previously thought”, and “turns out we were way wrong about corals”. I had to wonder if Dr. Ridd’s courage in telling the truth to the Great OZ of climate change politics had anything to do with a few rays of scientific sunshine making their way to the bottom of this swamp. Maybe not the bottom. If anybody sees Mikey Mann walking around with a sunburn, that’s the bottom of the swamp!
This upcoming decision by the High Court of Australia in the Dr Peter Ridd case, will clearly set an important legal precedent, which is clearly why the full bench of the High Court will be involved.
The issue at stake is the very survival of unbiased investigation and factual reporting of matters that from time to time may be in conflict with generally accepted understanding or about which there are divergent or controversial views.
It is this process of challenge and truth seeking that has in large part driven human progress.
And any curtailment of this process, difficult at times though it might be, will likewise act to reduce or reverse this progress.
This case is therefore of fundamental importance for the future of all Australians and all those that observe the outcome.
The High Court of Australia is the final legal bastion to protect these immeasurable and fragile values so critically important for all our futures.
“I speak for many of us at WUWT in wishing the best of luck to Dr. Ridd in prevailing over the draconian “cancel culture” at James Cook University.”
Hear, hear!! I say send John Cleese on a tour to re-introduce comedy to the universities down under. Their upper management seem to have no sense of humour (or irony)
This is good news. If the High Court is taking it on, they think there is something very important to consider about the Full Federal Court’s decision.
Here’s hoping the original decision is upheld along with academic freedom.