Kangaroo Courts for Kangaroos

[Geee]

American Spectator:

Kangaroo courts are one of the latest proposals from the green movement in Australia. No, not, as in previous usage of the term, courts in which legal niceties are set aside, but courts for kangaroos.

An Australian academic, Dr. John Hadley of the University of Western Sydney, has broken new legal ground by suggesting the setting up of courts to protect property rights for animals.

Certain difficulties seem to lie in the way, however. How will Counsel take instructions from clients? How will questions of undue influence be avoided in the case of less intelligent creatures? (Wombats and the like are not generally distinguished by their brain-power.) Who will have locus standi in cases of sheep owned by farmers? Should the creatures concerned decide to bequeath their property, how are wills going to be witnessed and proved valid?

Another problem: koalas are said to be permanently drunk on the alcohol fumes from the eucalyptus-leaves that form their diet. Here again forensic difficulties may arise.

Of course, the matter that immediately catches the trained legal eye here is that most fundamental of questions: who pays? Kangaroos do not, as a rule, carry briefing fees in their pouches. Assuming such cases get up at all, it seems fairly obvious that the costs for the plaintiffs at least will be borne by the Australian tax-payer. After all, a great deal of public money was spent a few years ago in the Noonkenbah case to protect the habitat of a mythical lizard, claimed to be sacred to some Aborigines, from oil-drilling. Tough luck on the oil-drillers (tough luck on the Australian economy, for that matter).