Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist

Perhaps half of America's private-sector employers ask job ap­plicants to declare their criminal records, and two-thirds rou­tinely run checks before taking people on. They see it as neces­sary due diligence. Unfortunately, checks that individual firms believe to be prudent are collectively bad for the 7m Americans who have spent time in prison and the 70m with a criminal record.

Fish are slippery characters, with little regard for international agree­ments or borders. The speediest, such as crescent-tailed bluefin tuna, can slice through the ocean at 70 kilometres per hour. Their routes take them beyond areas that come under the jurisdiction of individual coastal states, and into the high seas.

Oilmen groom the politicians; politicians do their best for the oil­men. Corporations grease the legislators, legislators return the favors.

"The moon was in its seventh house and Jupiter lined up with Mars," said Mr Chambers after senators overwhelmingly voted for the ban.

The thicker the rule book, the bigger the headache when it drops on you.

Many talk of being sovereign as if it were like being pregnant: one either is or is not.

Prison is an expensive way to make bad people worse.

Mathew, an Irish judge at the turn of the 20th century, is said to have quipped that justice in England is open to all, "like the Ritz Hotel".

Sophisticated legal services are somewhat like luxury cars and handbags, in that a high asking-price is taken as a sign of quality. No one wants to have hired the cheaper firm in a high-stakes lawsuit.

Parliament was so quiet you may hear a bill drop.

A generation ago Saadallah Wannous, a Syrian playwright, fa­mously lamented that his people were "sentenced to hope".

Asking the justice system to reform itself was like tying up a dog with a string of sausages — the legislative sausage machine.

What happens to our digital property after we die?

Every oil spill has a silver lining — if you are a lawyer, that is.

Winston Churchill thought Parliament should meet for no more than five months a year.

A former kangaroo skinner faced a kangaroo court.

The hangmen job advertisement, published only in the state- owned Sinhala-language newspaper, drew 178 responses. Appli­cants included a man with one eye, autorickshaw drivers, retired military men, labourers and a university student whose many attempts at securing other employment had failed. Ten aspirants were rejected, mostly because they were too old or too young. One woman was turned down on the ground that her gender would make her too emotional. No other qualifications were re­quired, beyond a basic school education. Officials worried that a more erudite class of executioner might be tempted to chuck in this job for another. Two (anonymous) candidates have been chosen to fill the vacancies. But since neither of the two previous executioners hanged anybody during their tenure, and one has since died, training the new recruits poses a challenge.

Suppose you want to buy a table. But you care about orang-utans, in­digenous peoples and carbon emissions, so you don't want it made with illegally harvested logs. Or suppose you run a chain of furniture shops, and you don't want to go to jail for buying illegal timber. Either way, you face a snag: how to tell if a log is legal?

Rape laws also determine whether consensual sexual activity in­volving young people is legal. The first recorded law on this was in England in 1275, which made it an offence to have sex (with or without her consent) with a "maiden within age". This was in­terpreted as meaning below the age of marriage, at that time 12 (Shakespeare's Juliet was 13 at the time of her romance with Ro­meo). A 17-year-old and a 15-year-old can have legal sex in one European Union country (Denmark) but commit a crime if they canoodle in Britain (though in practice the risk of prosecution would be minimal).

Some prisons in Brazil are so chaotic that inmates are not released once their sentences are over. Other prisoners, such as Marcos Mariano da Sil- va, a mechanic arrested for murder in 1976, are victims of mistaken iden­tity. He spent six years in jail in Pernambuco before the real culprit was arrested and he was released. Three years later he was stopped by traffic police who rearrested him as a fugitive. He spent 13 more years in jail, contracting tuberculosis. He died last year, hours after hearing that the state government had lost its appeal against paying him compensation.

Mr Zuma himself once faced corruption charges, escaping trial by the skin of his teeth on a legal technicality.

Was the ball over the goal-line? (Note to German readers: maybe not at Wembley in 1966, yes in Bloemfontein in 2010.) Was that sending-off de­served, or a gross miscarriage of justice? Was the referee brilliant, blind or bribed?

International Criminal Court has no gumshoes or handcuffs of its own — members must help to bring in the accused.