And people hate it. Making the job more unpleasant - meaning that you either need to compensate somehow or risk getting worse applicants to join - is a valid concern.

I don't really think it was unduly defensive, when you were saying you had easily found examples, for the GP to point out that your links weren't examples at all.

I think you've missed the point - he's not talking about prison labour, he's talking about generating revenue by locking up more prisoners because they get paid per-prisoner by the state.

I'm not sure that I see your point. He didn't say it was literally impossible - he said that the threshold for getting the jobs was very high.

Imagine two people who need to walk to the job centre to get a job. One has to climb over a series of low hurdles to get there; the other has to climb a series of 10ft walls.

You would be completely correct to say of the second person "those are all challenges, but not ones that can't be overcome. Can you honestly say that second person has worked hard and trained to climb walls all their lives?". Completely correct - but also completely missing the point.

I would say that it's the sign of a "broken" constitution - or at least one that isn't really sufficiently well drafted.

The reason for the Courts looking at historical evidence is that the constitution isn't drafted in sufficiently precise terms to enforce it on its own. Look at the text of the First Amendment for an example - read literally it would seem to mean that Congress could not prohibit human sacrifice, if that were necessary for the free exercise of a religion, and could not prohibit false advertising, which would be free speech; but that seems an unlikely intention and an undesirable result.

In an ideal world I think you would agree on the exact rights that you want to give constitutional protection - and their precise extent - and enshrine those in a new constitution. In practice, of course, that's impossible because so many different groups use the wiggle room to their advantage to try to permit, or prohibit, their cause of choice.

All that the GP's statement requires is that you don't punish any more than is required for deterrence.

That would mean conducting research into the severity of punishment required to deter the commission of different crimes - and if you found that (for example) imprisoning people for over two years doesn't increase the deterrence effect, the sentence would never be over two years unless either rehabilitation or public protection required it.

Legality is simply the inverse of illegality.

If something is "legal" that does not mean that you have a right to do it which cannot be abridged. The legislature can ban things that are legal. You are thinking of things to which you have a constitutionally protected right, which are a subset of the set of things that are legal.

(Source: I'm a lawyer)

This seems a bit odd to me - I understand you to say that you either have an expectation of complete privacy or no expectation of privacy. Why is it not correct to say that a woman in a short skirt accepts the risk that a strong breeze might lift it up, but not the risk that someone might put a camera in their shoe and use it to peer up her skirt?

This is not, by the way, the logic used by the court, which was not based on expectations of privacy. The Court found that a statute that refers to people who are "partially nude" does not include people wearing skirts that are "bypassed" using a camera.

Legality is simply the inverse of illegality. If you define what is illegal you also define what is legal, because anything that is not illegal is legal and vice-versa. Where it is unclear whether something is illegal, it is also by necessity unclear whether it is legal.

Putting my lawyer's hat on, I think that this is pretty unlikely. It's generally the case that if you provide for liquidated damages (which just means an upfront statement of the damages in the contract - here, the $80k) then you can't then sue for more if the damage proves to be more serious than you anticipated.

That's not an answer, because it doesn't tell me what you mean by "the legal process". Unless you explain how you think the legal process uses evidence I can't know what you mean.

If you are serious, all you need to do is write down what your logical process is. If you don't, well, it's very convenient that every time you're challenged on evidence or logic there's a reason that you can't answer the question.

As I said before, I'm not asking about the legal process. I'm asking about the logical process by which you personally are using the facts from the extradition hearing to determine that Assange is innocent.

I continue to believe that you are deliberately avoiding the question because you have no answer.

I'm not asking what the legal process is; I'm asking what your chain of logic is that allows you to determine whether someone is guilty based on the evidence at an extradition hearing, where guilt wasn't in issue.

Here's what I think the position is: I think you're avoiding the question because you know that you can't come up with a logical answer, just like you refused to provide a link to the Swedish court case because you know it doesn't exist, and you refused to identify your evidence because you didn't have any. If I'm wrong, all you have to do is type in your solid logical chain and press submit.

There needs to be a case that satisfies the requirements for an extradition order. Those requirements do not include proving Assange is guilty, or likely to be guilty, or providing one single word of evidence proving his guilt.

If you don't like my ABCD provide your own chain of reasoning.

OK, so help me out:

A. There is a hearing at which the prosecutor does not need to provide evidence of guilt.
B. At the hearing the prosecutor does not provide evidence of guilt.
C. ??
D. Assange is not guilty.

Are you saying (i) that there is no need for C, D just follows logically from A and B; or (ii) there is a need for a C - in which case what goes there?