Is there a definition/test for &quot;lack of merit&quot; (legal arguments)? Say in Bob v Rob there is a legal argument about how the law applies to a certain factual situation. Bob interprets/applies the applicable law one way. Rob — a different way. Both sound reasonably serious and well-thought, not frivolous. Both require analysis to accept or reject. The judge has to make a choice and makes it, accepting Bob's interpretation and rejecting Rob's. Does that make up an objective ground to label Rob's argument meritless? Can the finding of lack of merit in situations like this be objective in principle? Or does &quot;lack or merit&quot; refer to something clearly fallacious i.e. straightforwardly identifiable as not holding water without analysis?
In england-and-wales, an illuminating judgement of the Court of Appeal explores the relationship between such terms as &quot;bound to fail&quot;, &quot;not arguable&quot;, &quot;no rational basis&quot;, &quot;unfounded&quot;, &quot;misconcieved&quot;, &quot;hopeless&quot;, &quot;totally without merit&quot;, and &quot;no realistic prospect of success&quot;; Wasif v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] EWCA Civ 82. This arose in the context of a judicial review application, where procedural rules allow some claims to be rejected at an early stage, rather than proceeding to a full hearing. The normal course is that the claimant (the person who objects to a decision the government has made) will file papers with the court describing their claim. If the judge deems their case &quot;arguable&quot;, then it can carry on, ultimately with the judge deciding who is right. If not, then there can be a &quot;renewal hearing&quot;, where the applicant can explain their case orally, in the hope of persuading the judge that their case is arguable after all. But if the judge says the case, on the basis of the written material, is &quot;totally without merit&quot;, then there is no renewal hearing, and we are done. The claimant could file a fresh case, if the judge's reasons for denial gave them enough clues about what might be arguable instead, or can appeal the finding. Evidently, then, some points can be not arguable, but also not totally without merit. In Wasif, the court differentiated between (paras 15ff): Cases where the judge &quot;can see no rational basis on which the claim could succeed&quot; are certainly bound to fail, and a hearing would be pointless; they are totally without merit. Cases which contain a rational argument, but the judge &quot;is confident that, even taking the case at its highest, it is wrong&quot;. Notwithstanding the judge's confidence, it is possible that his mind could be changed if an oral hearing took place, so these should not be deemed to be totally without merit. They are described as &quot;not arguable&quot; at this stage, but the claimant gets to argue that they are arguable. The decision is one involving, well, judgement, and is not totally precise, but the experienced judges in Wasif felt that it was a realistic distinction in practice. The court points out (17(3) and (5)) that a hearing gives the claimant the chance to address specific issues the judge has noted, especially when they are self-represented and their documents are not well-prepared. In those instances, the judge might be able to spot an actual arguable claim lurking in the material, and &quot;the correct course&quot; could be to refuse permission but allow an oral hearing so that the real issue can be drawn out. What we can see from this is that a point might be &quot;not arguable&quot; (the judge thinks it is plainly wrong), but still have some level of merit at that stage (the judge is willing to let the claimant address his objections). When the judge comes to deliver his opinion at the very end, he might still say that a particular point is without merit (he has heard all about it and thinks it is completely wrong) even if he'd conceded earlier that the claimant deserved a chance to present it. Not all arguments that fail are described as &quot;without merit&quot;. If Bob prevails in Bob v Rob it does not follow that all of Rob's points were hopeless. Judges can deploy colourful opprobrium but are just as likely to recognize that some arguments are strong, even when the opposing argument was stronger. Equally, a judge might decide that neither Bob nor Rob is completely correct, and the real answer is some other position - even when they both presented reasonable arguments that were worth hearing.
The need to prove a negative arises only from the way you've phrased the problem. In the UK, theft is defined as&mdash; dishonestly appropriating property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving its legitimate owner of it. All five elements must be proved in order to secure a conviction for theft. In the case of an item removed from a store, the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that&mdash; the defendant had a dishonest intent; the defendant appropriated the item (treated it as his own); the item was 'property' (straightforward in this case); the item belonged to someone else (ditto); and the defendant intended to permanently deprive the owner of it. Clearly proving that the defendant left the shop without paying would be an important element in proving (2) and (5) above. Note that the prosecution must prove that he left without paying, not that he did not pay. In this example, the prosecution might adduce CCTV or witness evidence of defendant leaving without paying. If the defendant did pay for the item but doesn't have a receipt, he can still give witness testimony in his own defence. The prosecution is unlikely to have strong evidence to the contrary if payment was in fact made. The totality of evidence, put before a jury or summary court, will be considered in the round when establishing guilt.
While less specific than the term mentioned by @DavidSiegel (i.e. an &quot;Antinomy&quot;), &quot;impossibility&quot;, &quot;impossibility of performance&quot;, and &quot;impracticability&quot; are more frequently used. If the obligation is imposed by contract rather than by a statute or regulation, the term &quot;frustration of purpose&quot; is also frequently used. Even more generally, a situation like this is called a &quot;dilemma.&quot; More obscurely, sometimes this gets litigated in the frame of whether non-compliance with the law was a voluntary act, i.e. the actus reus necessary to establish a prima facie case of a violation of a law imposing a criminal or quasi-criminal penalty. The &quot;choice of evils&quot; doctrine could also apply although this is a much narrower doctrine excusing liability than many people believe it to be. There are also a couple of other possible outcomes. Sometimes a court would treat this situations as an implied ambiguity or inconsistency in the law that calls for the court to interpret the true meaning of the statute or regulation. For example, in this circumstance, it is implausible that the statute or regulation was intended to put good faith vaccine distributors in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation where they would be fined no matter what they did because conforming to the law was impossible. So a court might conclude that the requirement that &quot;If you don't use up your vaccine doses, you're getting a huge fine&quot; contains an implied condition that this only applies if there are sufficient people who eligible to obtain the vaccination to use all of your vaccine doses (which as as matter of practicality is very likely to be true, so it is something of a false conflict as applied in most cases). But it isn't at all uncommon for people to put themselves in situations where their on ill advised or wrongful conduct puts them in a position in which now, after their prior bad acts, anything they do will be a crime or a civil offense, and they are indeed damned if they do and damned if they don't. For example, if you start to attempt to steal a car and see a baby in the back, you can either continue, and face kidnapping charges and car theft charges, or you can stop after you have already done enough to make you guilty of attempted car theft even if you abandon the crime at that point to prevent yourself for kidnapping the child. No matter what you do, you are stuck committing one crime or another. But you actions will determine which crime you will be guilty of committing. The fact that at the final moment of decision that determines which crime you will be guilty of, any choice you make will expose you to criminal liability, doesn't make these laws invalid, because this Hobson's choice (using the term only loosely) is one that you brought that on yourself.
To be valid, a point of order generally needs to be made at the time of the possible Rules violation Exceptions are where the Rules violation violates the law, where it conflicts with a previously adopted motion (other than a motion to rescind that earlier motion), or where it violates a fundamental principle. Assuming your example doesn’t do any of those things, then the point of order is moot once the vote has been taken.
There are all manner of reasons that evidence can be excluded at a trial, most of which are set forth in rules of evidence. If the evidence was not admitted on the grounds of relevance and the charge was speeding, I presume that the reason that it was found not be to relevant was that it was not possible from a video to determine how fast someone was driving and there was no dispute in the case over who was driving. If the defendant could have articulated some reason that the video was relevant to those points, perhaps it could have been admitted. But, as if often the case, pro se defendants are usually not articulate enough to set forth a legally relevant reason that evidence should be admitted. Unless the defendant could show that the video showed something allowing a jury to determine whether or not the law was violated, it probably wouldn't be relevant and I can't easily imagine how it would be relevant, but perhaps there was some special facts or circumstances that might show, for example, that the speed gun was actually picking up another vehicle.
This probably isn't a ground for an appeal. While a party arguing to reverse a trial court's decision must show that the argument that they are making on appeal was "preserved" by that party at trial by making that argument in the trial court, the converse is not true. Indeed, one of the rules of appellate practice is that a trial court's ruling will be upheld for any reason supported by the evidence even if it wasn't made by any party at trial. Generally speaking, a trial court isn't supposed to try a pro se party's case for them, but once the evidence is in, the court is free to do original legal research and come to a conclusions contrary to the arguments made by either of the parties. A judge is supposed to correctly apply the actual law to the facts notwithstanding the efforts of the parties to lead it astray. This doesn't systemically happen in favor of one party or the other in my experience, but is more common when one or both parties is relatively inexperienced in the relevant legal field. Appellate courts also come to conclusions about the law not advanced by either party on a regular basis. If anything, this is even more common in the area of administrative law, where the judge is likely to be a subject area specialist, than in ordinary civil litigation. It is also more common in administrative law because a judge in that context is more focused on the institutional implications of a bad precedent than trial court judges in ordinary courts. (PS is there a technical term for the rules concerning the "role" of the judge in a court, what they supposed to do, and not supposed to do?) Probably, but there isn't any term that comes readily to mind. If I can think of one, I will update this answer.
Against Bob: yes; Against Cindy: no I'm going to borrow @Trish's example because it's a good one although the conclusions they reach are wrong. Alice made a green box. Bob signs an NDA never to tell anyone that Alice made a green box, and there is a clause in it that if the NDA is breached, the box is red. Bob tells Cindy that Alice made a green box. Cindy has a patent on making green boxes. Cindy sues Alice and in the lawsuit puts Bob on the stand. Situation 1 So, the box is objectively green and objectively a breach of Cindy's patent on green boxes. Bob is on the stand and is required to answer questions honestly and no contract can prevent him from doing so. He testifies that the box is green. This would be a breach of contract except that a clause that requires a breach of the law (perjury in this case) is void for public policy reasons so Bob cannot be sued for this. However, he can be sued for the initial breach - he may have a public policy defense here because Alice was breaking the law, however, it’s easy enough to construct a scenario where Alice was innocent but suffered loss from Bob’s disclosure. Cindy can say what she likes because she is not bound by the NDA. Cindy wins, Alice loses. Situation 2 Cindy dies - after a long and happy life so we won't grieve too much. To Bob's surprise, he inherits Cindy's green box patent of which he was previously in complete ignorance of. Bob sues Alice for breaching Cindy's now his, patent. So, the box is objectively green and objectively a breach of Cindy's patent on green boxes. However, Bob agreed with Alice in the contract that the box is red and so, legally for matters between Alice and Bob the box is legally red (notwithstanding that everyone knows it's green) and is not in breach of Bob's patent. This sort of stuff has a name - a legal fiction. Adoption is a legal fiction - adoptive parents are (legally) parents; biological parents of adopted children are (legally) strangers. Alice wins, Bob loses.
Most of your examples don't seem to be so much self-contradictory, as limited to a subset of the obvious meaning for purposes of a particular law. When a term has a specific meaning within a particular field or context, it is often called a "term of art". For example "Fair use" is a term of art in US Copyright law, and "Under color of law" is a term of art in US civil rights law. "Standing" is a term of art in most common-law jurisdictions. But a term of art is usually somewhat broadly understood, and is not limited to one particular law or section of law. I would just call such a thing a "specially defined term" or just say "Q as defined for purposes of the XYZ law".