Melissa Davey

Melissa Davey is the ace reporter from The Guardian who covered the Pell trial from beginning to end ... Compassionate, driven and intense ... Book under steam ... Journalism and the meaning of life ... Plenty of gluten for her last meal ... A questing spirit is On The Couch 

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Wilde's Dieppe into despair

Rupert Everett gives us the post-Newgate decay of Oscar Wilde ... Dieppe, Paris and Naples ... The Happy Prince, reviewed by Miss Lumière ... The tail end of a regrettable defamation action ... A rouge dabbed reminder of Death in Venice ... The not-so-gay final chapter of an Irish wit, complete with the famous wallpaper scene  

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The crabs run free

Christmas Island reopening for business ... The lives of detainees laid bare ... Australian policy at its most primitive ... Miss Lumière reviews Gabrielle Brady's film Island of the Hungry Ghosts ... Trauma counselling curtailed by the dead hand of Canberra ... How we make them suffer ... From phosphate to fear 

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Too much mush

James Baldwin doused in a layer of syrup ... US justice ... Where's Atticus Finch when you need him? ... Black lives, white injustice ... Love, politics and melodrama ... Miss Lumière reviews If Beale Street Could Talk 

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Green Book: not all black and white

Green Book, reviewed by Miss Lumière ... America in the 1960s ... The white working class tough guy on a tour of the South with a refined black musician ... What could go wrong? ... Food for thought ... "Motorist's guide for negroes" 

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Richard Beasley SC

Richard Beasley SC is On The Couch ... Novellist and silk ... Until now he was ankle deep in the Murray Darling Basin Royal Commission, which reported on January 29 ... Last meal on death row ... Playing with a horse jigger ... Thoughts on water and life  

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Radical social change

Tax deductions, gender discrimination and the US Constitution get a workout in On the Basis of Sex ... Ruth and Marty Ginsburg's great case, together ... Tenth Circuit bowled over by RBG's five minute final submission ... Breaching the legislative dam against equality ... Miss Lumière at the preview  

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The case against appointing Queens Counsel

South Australian CJ Chris Kourakis makes a well argued case why new QCs should not be appointed ... It will weaken the independence of the legal profession, not enhanse it ... Judges oppose the bar's QC agitation ... Judges unlikely to facilitate any arrangement for monarchical post-nominals ... Kourakis' letter to the AG 

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Hands off

Britain's leading legal lights call out old deplorables at the bar ... Too much inappropriateness ... The season of harassment ... New policies agreed by the Inns of Court ... Life at the bar is "deeply seductive" ... Current reporting rules for barristers are inadequate ... Latest from the Old Dart 

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More of Rush's "spirited enthusiasm"

Yael Stone puts the cat among the pigeons ... Will Rush sue again? ... A confident and creditable performance ... The backstage role of Leon Zwier from Arnold Bloch Leibler ... Belittling women who have something to say ... Defamation, a mug's game

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