I would like to thank all my readers and commentators (except the spam bots of course) who in the past have encouraged me to keep on posting!

Best wishes to all of you,

Daniel

In 2007, among others, a new form (or genre?) of literature has emerged, namely satire in the guise of an online product review. Here’s a fine example (hat tip to James): reviews of the BIC ballpoint pen in black. Enjoy!

The Federal Supreme Court ruled that this decision is not unconstitutional. (Decision in German is here.)

For a bit more than 30 dollars, users get access to a database containing information on all legal aspects of a divorce.

For about 800 dollars, couples may create their own divorce settlement and the paperwork necessary to demand a divorce by consent (one of the “modes” of divorce the Swiss Civil Code knows). The settlement is created automatically on the basis of a questionnaire that the spouses have to fill out.

For Switzerland, this service is a true innovation. But I wonder how the lawyers who offer their services handle their liability for the automatically-generated settlements. Here is what their terms of use say:

Nous déclinons en outre toute responsabilité quant à d’éventuels dommages susceptibles de survenir du fait de l’utilisation des pages du site divorce.ch, y compris par suite de téléchargement d’éventuels fichiers ou pour ce qui concerne la Convention de divorce ou la Requête en divorce.

I have doubts as to the validity of this waiver, but all depends on the legal qualification of the contract concluded by the couple and the website owners.  Especially the high price of the service and the fact that the website owners are attorneys would make a good case for saying that the contract involves more duties than just offering the online form and its processing “as is”.

I’ve had a wonderful time with my colleagues at the FIR-HSG, but I won’t miss them because I will still be around during my writing time. Academically, I guess my work for the FIR-HSG and the Berkman Center has marked my legal thinking as strongly as I had not believed was possible before I started my job.

Since I refuse to see the termination of my labor contract I think it’s inappropriate to thank all the people I’m indebted to yet. Remember: I’m checking out, not leaving.

I’ve gone into politics.

Over the past few months a new party has been successful in Switzerland for whose politics I’ve been waiting since I’ve come of age. Its name is the “Green Liberal Party” (Grünliberale Partei, GLP) and it is socially liberal, economically libertarian, plus it has a strong emphasis on sustainability, particularly in environmental issues. (That’s why it’s gotten its name and why it’s been successful …)

Anyway, I co-founded the national and cantonal branches of our party, and since there will be national elections in October, I’m also on our party ticket for the National Council. (We have a proportional representation election system, and in our canton, 12 MPs are elected, so our goal is to make one seat with our ticket of 12. My personal odds are close to zero.)

I guess I won’t be able to post much on this blog in the next few months. However, if you happen to be able to read German, you can visit my new political blog on:

http://haeusermann.wordpress.com

Our website will be online in the next few days.

And, being known among my friends of finding an information law issue within any subject, here is the one for my party: We’re already having a domain name dispute …

Though I wonder whether the monkeys are also highly skilled–it’s easy to find a highly trained monkey, but the skilled ones are really difficult to recruit …