International 14 Worlds

Originally posted by Ralph T

Stefan, re  

"Courts run by professional judges frequently make mistakes. The
idea that because an IJ comes to a decision, that makes it
unquestionably correct, seems more than a little naive to me."

I'm all too aware that the courts often make the wrong decision; I'm
not naive, it's my profession and I think they stuff it up all too
often.

However, I also know that press reports of court decisions very, very,
very rarely contain all the correct information and therefore
second-guessing decisions based on a very brief jury statement and
press reports and  (which in this case have only included info
from one side to the protest) is not a good game. We do NOT have all
the info that went to the jury, we have NOT heard from one side in the
press, so IMHO we don't have the necessary information to analyse,
dissect and attack the reasoning of the jury as to the facts. 

When we want to attack a court's decision, it is normally done with
full study of all relevant precedents; if we want to attack their
findings as to evidence it normally demands at least a full study of
all transcripts, statements, documents etc. Without that (which we
don't have here) we're second-guessing without full  evidence.
It's one thing to attack a decision when we have the evidence, it's
another to attack a decision when we have less evidence than the jury
did.

Re Jingoism -

I think the British have the best dinghy sailors around (I've said so
in Y & Y forums) and one of the best dinghy scenes and many/most
of the British sailors I;ve met are great guys. But surely, a British
sailor must look inwards for unconscious bias when examining a question
like this - just as an Aussie, a Kiwi, a Frenchman, an American must do.

The first post in these threads was from Rick, who says "I started this
thread to create debate, my first posting dosn't say who I think was
stiched up, it could have been the Aus boat."

But that post called the decision "funny". We can safely assume it
didn't mean it was "funny ha ha"; no-one was laughing; which in normal
vernacular leaves only "funny/peculiar", implying that it was incorrect.

Rick's second post call the decision "well fishy" and 'convenient for
the Aussies" and assumed they had "followed" Barker (when it later
transpired that was not the case).

This, and other examples of the widespread desire to attack the
decision with the insufficient info available,  lead me to think
that there was some bias underlying some posts; just as we all would
have perceived bias in posts of Australian sailors if Irwin/Perry had
lost the protest. There's plenty of research to indicate that humans have a very biased view towards their "team".

Maybe; perhaps probably; I came to the decision that nationalism was
involved without knowing all the facts. But that seems fitting in a
way; in this case none of us know all the facts but that hasn''t
stopped lots of criticism of the jury..... 

Edited by Chris 249