Sounds like just you and me interested now. Kunstler - sounds familiar. What was his firm? I know a few.

Send me the cites for the Doherty case. I have a friend who used to lecture at Queen Mary and Westfield (she and I wrote a lot of stuff about an arguable area of copyright - called "format rights" which my oldish acquaintances Bud Brylawski (the father, not the son) and Mel Nimmer (the father not the son) and indeed the surviving (happily) Dennis Angel have asserted are likely to be protectable under US law. She may be able to get copies free for me. She is now sitting in immigration tribunals and laughs when I call her right wing on the ground that she thinks most of the other adjudicators are right wing. So if you think that I am right wing....

If all else fails her husband is a parliamentary draftsman and may have sources......

Your remark about the sword of justice sounds a sour note over here. Have you followed libel developments in ths jurisdiction? One Jonathan Aitken made a similar remark and is now regretting it, and a certain Al Fayed has adopted a part of it and I pray (I don't, 'cos the history of organised religion is black with sin - sorry if the phrase is politically incorrect but I searched my heart for one with the same resonance and it was not there) that it causes him the same pain.

I do not accept that the practice of law is dissociated with intelligence. I find that it demands much. I regret that it requires (or seems to) more dissimulation these days. But I have had a couple of recent successes which cause me to ask what my opponents were doing - they missed easy routes to rout me.

You say: - (of a conversation) "I said, "You will never help to solve a problem if you do not speak the truth about it. You tell the people that the people who have taken up arms here, the IRA, the UDA, the UVF and others, are nothing but thugs and gangsters. But you know as well as I do that among the military groups there are men and women who are sensitive and highly intelligent political thinkers and strategists. You tell the public lies." "

It is a good speech, but that is all. Problems domestic local and international are often solved without truth. Look at WIPO and emergent nations and the collision with producer rights both agricultural and intellectual - cf the EU. No-one says that the paramilitaries are nothing but thugs (do I detect an impermissible bias against an accredited former religious group (BG)). They may say that they are thugs etc, but never that that is all they are. What they do say is that they are discredited by acting as thugs etc.

If I may suggest it you should not confuse debating (for which I also have cups) with law (velvet paws).

In passing I ponder your reference to Gipsy issues. I was unaware that true Romanies had reached America.

There are so many issues lawyers ought to debate. I submitted 120 points to the UK govt before the passage of our 1988 Copyright (etc) act, and they adopted only one. I had a fairly heated exchange of letters with Lord Denning after he retired about rights of way - he was anti four wheel drive, I for them. But mostly the exigencies of making a living prevail.

A thought occurs however. Do you have a series of anecdotes about native rights lawyers? It is about time there was a film more intelligent than the recent "mob" inspired ones about a lawyer fighting for right. The last one I can think of starred James Stewart!!! I might (no promises) be able to source a producer, some finance, and a scriptwriter. One such story or more might have legs. Message me.