RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

18
courtrooms
Radical Middle | 193
I am happy to assure you that nasciturus pro iam nato
habetur, quotiens de commodis eius agitur. Which is to say that
a foetus may be treated as a living person provided that it is
subsequently born alive.
This is a neat principle of inheritance law and a neater example
of law-student knowledge. real lawyers get flabbergasted when
I quote them nasciturus. They have been doing real law; they
forgot nasciturus 20 minutes after the exam. Defected lawgraduates
like me remember their nascituruses forever but
can’t read a summons.
Buthelezi won his judgment in the Natal Supreme court. I
couldn’t believe it. To me this was naked travesty, open and
shut. I had to appeal. To leave it there was no option.
I was also with hindsight shocked to learn how much
sleepwalking I’d been doing. My nasciturusy mind had failed
to imbibe how a plea of justification – that is, “it wasn’t wrong
to say they’re thugs, because they are thugs” – deepened my