Judicial Ethics

@LanguageLog defends a Canadian judge against a charge of plagiarism (Is "plagiarism" in a judicial decision wrong?)

The Court of Appeal for British Columbia has recently overturned a decision by Justice Joel Groves on the unusual grounds that the judge's written decision was largely copied from the submission of the plaintiffs, thus creating the unfortunate impression that the judge had been insufficiently diligent in considering both sides of the case.

The written record of a judge's decision serves several purposes. It provides an explanation to the losing side, as well as being a document that can be used by lawyers to predict the outcome of similar cases in future. Above all, it provides evidence that justice has been done.

In the event of a decision being inadequately documented, we might imagine that the proper course of action would be to invite the judge to expand and clarify his decision, and to address any points that he had failed to cover. Obviously this revised document might still be subject to the normal appeal process.

Instead of adopting this course of action, the Court of Appeal (by a majority of two to one) has demanded an entirely new trial. Presumably the appeal judges deem this to be the best way of achieving the purposes stated above. A new trial will be costly and troublesome for both the plaintiffs and defendents, but it will put more money into the pockets of the lawyers. Cui Bono?

Cojocaru (Guardian Ad Litem) v. British Columbia Women’s Hospital and Health Center, 2011 BCCA 192

Blurring the Boundaries

I have just chanced upon a curious page on the US government website, entitled Bipartisanship on SCHIP, apparently posted on behalf of a member of the US House of Representatives, and featuring two Simpsons characters (Burns and Quimby).

I guess the intent of the page is to demonstrate that SCHIP must be a bad thing, because Burns and Quimby both approve of it. QED. Such is the intellectual quality of political debate in some quarters!

There is no copyright notice or acknowledgement or apology to Matt Groening and the Simpsons team. Presumably the House of Representatives doesn't need to worry about copyright law or etiquette. Or perhaps American politicians identify so strongly with these parodies of themselves, that they imagine they own the intellectual property.

I have no opinion about SCHIP, and this page does nothing to help me form an opinion. I don't know who thought this page was a good idea. But using subversive cartoon characters is a dangerous game, and can produce an outcome quite different from the intended one. Excellent.

Much Ado About Nothing 2

We can learn things about an organization from observing the issues to which it devotes its attention, and the manner in which it conducts its arguments.

Strong words have been exchanged around the internet on the topic of essay mills and plagiarism. These arguments have been tediously repeated in various Internet forums, including FreelanceWriting and Wikipedia, as well as in the comments to earlier posts in this blog. I have already indicated that I am bored with the content of the debate, but I am intrigued by its continued existence and energy.

From the style and content of a person's argument, we may construct a picture of that person's intended audience. Obviously, if the purpose of an argument is to persuade American students not to use Ukranian essay mills, then the argument has to be presented in a form that is likely to be convincing (or at least confusing) to the kind of lazy and dimwitted student that might otherwise be tempted to use Ukranian essay mills. Some of these arguments may well seem illogical, pointless or even insulting to the rest of us, but that obviously doesn't matter.

Looking at the arguments in this way may also help to explain why they frequently stray into legal discourse, including complicated discussion of copyright law, and frequent accusations of libel and criminality. (Legal note: it is not generally considered libellous to ask tough questions, even in an impolite manner.) Threats and insults may be intended to deter criticism, but may often have the opposite effect of annoying and provoking the critics, and turning the puzzled into the hostile, thus escalating the situation and generating more publicity.

It is not hard to see how the participants in an escalating debate may become trapped, forced to reply to every slur, unable to let the smallest implied criticism pass without comment and rebuttal. But this kind of slanging match surely becomes increasingly meaningless to the lazy and dimwitted students who are its intended beneficiaries, and yet who are unlikely to ever read a word of it.

To the participants in this debate: Since you have nothing to do with any Ukranian essay mills, you surely cannot take it personally when I characterize the clients of such companies as lazy and dimwitted. Please note that I am under no obligation to provide a platform for anyone to pursue this matter further.

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Essay Fraud 3

[Update] Corrections to this post have been made for legal reasons. Comments have now been switched off.

Sorry to go on about Essay Fraud, but someone called Nancy posted some interesting links in a comment to my previous post, which I wanted to follow-up.

• Hiram Hover
• FreelanceWriting.com Discussion Forum

1. I agree with Hiram's point, that students who try to cheat deserve to be ripped off. In my post on Cheating 2, I asserted the converse - that it is precisely when students are trying to cheat that they may be most vulnerable to being ripped off.

2. I find it amusing that EssayFraud (self-appointed champion of English-speaking essay writers) describes itself as a profitless organization. Here's an English lesson for you guys - profitless means useless. I think the term you're looking for is not-for-profit.

2. [correction] I find it amusing that EssayFraud (self-appointed champion of "professional, native English-speaking writers") once described itself as a profitless organization. In Much Ado About Nothing, Leonato says

"I pray thee cease thy counsel,
Which falls into mine ears as profitless

As water in a sieve."

3. Someone on the FreelanceWriting discussion makes the following point: "If you are an American company based in the US how come you speak Russian?" There are plenty of people in Russia and Ukraine who speak reasonable (if occasionally unidiomatic) English. But this person doesn't expect native-born Americans to speak any Russian. Doesn't this just tell us volumes about the American education system? In which case, would you really want an American to do your Latin translation or write your geography essay for you?

See more by Hiram Hover on Plagiarism

Related Posts

Cheating 1 (May 2006) Cheating 2 (June 2006)
Essay Fraud 1 (June 2006) Essay Fraud 2 (June 2006)

Essay Fraud 2

[Update] This post prompted a fierce discussion between multiple parties, which you can find in the comments. Comments are now closed.

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Following my posts on Essay Fraud and Cheating 2, I have received an email from Essay Fraud which reads as follows.

"You have blatantly libeled our organization. We do not sell any papers! As such, we have no 'competitors'! We will grant you 72 hours to remove this libelous post. Rest assured, your little misunderstanding will earn you quite the heap of legal problems if you do not comply."

I am always happy to receive comments from readers, including corrections. Accordingly, I have altered the wording of my post Cheating 2, and I am happy to adopt Essay Fraud's own description of itself as a watchdog organization. I note that Essay Fraud invites applications for membership from organizations satisfying certain criteria although I was unable to find any members named on its website. I was also unable to find a US address on its website.

Meanwhile, what are we to make of the threatening email? Quite the heap of punctuation, wouldn't you say? I can't quite place the idiomatic use of English ...

So I'm puzzled about the true purpose of Essay Fraud. It provides hundreds of names of what it claims are foreign sites, and no names of bona-fide American sites. So it could be used as a directory of the sites it claims to deprecate. Meanwhile, by complaining about the scandal of foreign papers, it effectively draws attention to the wider scandal of an outsourcing market in term papers. It identifies certain risks for students who wish to buy essays, and may have the effect of encouraging some students to write their own essays instead. And it exposes some systemic risks in the American education system, which educational institutions may wish to consider.

So the web presence of Essay Fraud has certain effects. I accept that by giving publicity to Essay Fraud, I may be helping to amplify some of these effects. So be it.

Essay Fraud

What is the purpose of EssayFraud.org? According to the organization website, its members provide freelance research and composition services to students, and it expects students to use these services responsibly.

If a consumer contracts a freelance writer to research and compose an example document from which the consumer intends to glean unique insights/viewpoints on a given topic, the consumer must properly cite that writer and/or that writer's employing Web site when writing his/her own paper.

Yeah, right.

Some people might think that the best clue about the purpose of EssayFraud.org is contained in the name of the organization. See my posts on Cheating 1 and 2.

Essay Fraud is currently engaged in a campaign to encourage students to buy American essays (sorry, I should have said research insights) rather than cheaper services from Pakistan or Ukraine.

The wider effect of the Essay Fraud phenomenon is that essay outsourcing undermines the supposed purposes of the American education system. If Americans are paying Pakistanis and Ukrainians to write their essays, it won't be long before Americans have to pay Pakistanis and Ukrainians to run their companies.

Whoops! According to some software industry leaders, this is already starting to happen. See my post on the Globally Integrated Enterprise.

Who is being clever here, and who is being stupid? (In a later post, Jack van Hoof calls this Paying to Stay Dumb.)

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Comments to this post have now been switched off.