Facts
Emergency powers in Regulation 18B of the Defence (General) Regulations 1939 permitted the Home Secretary to intern people if he had "reasonable cause" to believe that they had "hostile associations". Sir John Anderson exercised this power in respect of a man called Jack Perlzweig, who used the name Robert Liversidge, committing him to prison but giving no reason. On appeal, the case, joined with that of Ben Greene, reached the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords, the highest court of appeal. They had to decide whether the court could investigate the objective basis for the reasonable cause; in other words, could they evaluate the Home Secretary's actions on an objective standard, comparing them to that which might be taken by a reasonable man, or were they to measure them against the personal standard of the Secretary?
Read more about this topic: Liversidge V Anderson
Famous quotes containing the word facts:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To-day ... when material prosperity and well earned ease and luxury are assured facts from a national standpoint, woman’s work and woman’s influence are needed as never before; needed to bring a heart power into this money getting, dollar-worshipping civilization; needed to bring a moral force into the utilitarian motives and interests of the time; needed to stand for God and Home and Native Land versus gain and greed and grasping selfishness.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“I’m not afraid of facts, I welcome facts but a congeries of facts is not equivalent to an idea. This is the essential fallacy of the so-called “scientific” mind. People who mistake facts for ideas are incomplete thinkers; they are gossips.”
—Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928)