{"id":1471,"date":"2023-03-20T22:27:22","date_gmt":"2023-03-20T20:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=1471"},"modified":"2023-03-20T22:27:22","modified_gmt":"2023-03-20T20:27:22","slug":"that-was-the-week-that-was-13-19-march-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=1471","title":{"rendered":"That Was The Week That Was 13-19 March 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The European Courts: Saying it loud and saying it clear<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The judicial mind works in particular ways.  As the final arbiter of what the law says, judges need to focus on words, gossamer words, like few others.  One of the most famous of all judicial statements for example, is in the World Trade Organisation dispute concerning bananas \u2013 the famous Banana Wars of the late 90s.  There are several thousands of pages of transcript and decisions, helpfully summarised here<\/a>, but it is all worth it for this pearl, \u2018Only a banana is like a banana\u2019.  How true is that?  You could live your life on that sort of wisdom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Words matter to judges almost as much as words matter to advertising agencies.  Each make their living from using words.   Except, sometimes they sit at opposite ends of the spectrum on that use.  This week, the week that was, we were gifted a tour of that spectrum, from one end to the other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Monday, a decision<\/a> from the New Zealand Disputes Tribunal about what agencies say for their clients and what the court thinks they should mean.\u00a0 Mark Morgan thought that Emirates meant that when they said \u2018business class\u2019 they meant Business Class, just like their advertisements were telling them.\u00a0 Lie flat beds, lots of plump and comfy cushions, mini bar, internet; all that sort of thing.\u00a0 Big mistake.\u00a0 No, instead, they flew from Auckland to London with none of that.\u00a0 So, 13 and a half thousand NZ dollars later, Mr Morgan and his wife were made whole \u2013 as they say in the law.\u00a0 See the linguistic skills there? \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See that way with words even more adroitly at the European Court of Justice on Friday.  From Tauranga to Luxemburg, from Monday to Friday, from advertising to judicial decisions, has a week that was ever taken you so far, both physically and metaphysically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Friday, which was one of those days when decisions and opinions are suddenly allowed into public view \u2013 a veritable love bomb of judicial wisdom that showers down on us from time to time, we were shown that in the dancing with words stakes, their honours are in a category of their own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, dance with the unadulterated artistry of this decision<\/a> of the Court of Justice of the EU, when it determined, in its infinite wisdom, that \u2018appropriate use\u2019 means only the \u2018absence of misuse\u2019.  That might be the case if a particular use was not specified, but now, thanks to their honours, Delta has grandfather rights to slots they did not use.  So that makes sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it is arguably a mere bauble of linguist brilliance compared to the Advocate General noting<\/a> that \u2018the general principle of non-discrimination prohibits, on the one hand, treating comparable situations differently and, on the other hand, treating different situations in the same way\u2019.  So now you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Words matter.  Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The European Courts: Saying it loud and saying it clear The judicial mind works in particular ways.  As the final arbiter of what the law says, judges need to focus on words, gossamer words, like few others.  One of the most famous of all judicial statements for example, is in the World Trade Organisation dispute […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1472,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions\/1472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}