Great telling of Monroe and Ella Fitzgerald and her success in Monroe v Fox: a different, than many, view of Monroe. Many thanks DAG emptycity.substack.com/p/marilyn-mo...

She gives off very Janelle Monáe vibes there. I think it might be the intensity of her stare whilst she's talking, and her light voice

NEW Marilyn Monroe, the Hollywood studio system, and the law of contract The autonomy and agency of an actor taking on a major media company and winning By me, at the Empty City blog emptycity.substack.com/p/marilyn-mo...

@davidallengreen.bsky.social simply cannot keep producing content of this quality. Something’s got to give. (Sorry. But in all seriousness, read this and just marvel at the craft. Superlative legal commentary.)

Surely if you're head of MI5, you don't need to explain how you got someone's number.

You may regard Marilyn Monroe as a comedy actor - and she was brilliant at comedy. But this is her in Don’t Bother to Knock as a psychopath babysitter. An early film by her (and my favourite). Had she lived on after 1962, she may well have become a great anti-hero. youtube.com/shorts/msoCK...

The UK has won this case at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, meaning the government does not have to pay up to £100m claimed by Rwanda The court found the UK had not breached its agreement with Rwanda and that its obligations had ended with a "November 2024 exchange of diplomatic notes"

Almost certainly the Rwandans were put to considerable expense and disruption by the UK’s chaotic attempts to send asylum seekers there, but the moral of the story is “don’t sign up for Europe’s racist deportation programmes“, and also “try sorting out your own dismal human rights record”

Don’t know if you spotted this @davidallengreen.bsky.social #MarilynMonroe www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

NEW Marilyn Monroe, the Hollywood studio system, and the law of contract The autonomy and agency of an actor taking on a major media company and winning By me, at the Empty City blog emptycity.substack.com/p/marilyn-mo...

So good to read more about the nuances of how Monroe operated. For a woman often portrayed in such high contrast, rollercoasterish terms she seemed such wonderfully complex character and deeply smart woman. Happy birthday for Monday, M. And brava, DATG for a thought-provoking morning coffee read.

But once you get through to the evidence, what was plain was Monroe's autonomy and agency in taking on a major Hollywood studio and winning. Very different from usual narrative structure of her not being in control. After 1956 things do change and things drift. But in 1953-56 she was in control.

NEW Marilyn Monroe, the Hollywood system, and the law of contract How Marilyn Monroe took on Twentieth Century Fox and defeated a major studio By me at @prospectmagazine.co.uk, on Monroe's centenary www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/7367...

Happy centenary, Marilyn Monroe Quoted below is my @prospectmagazine.co.uk article from Saturday on how she took on Twentieth Century Fox and won. Later day I am hoping to post on my own blog a more detailed account of her agency and autonomy in that significant contractual dispute.

Thank you for all the kind comments on the Marilyn Monroe post. I may post a more detailed account about how she took on Twentieth Century Fox on my own blog for Monday, the actual centenary.

Free speech absolutism for you.

It has now been 10 weeks and three days since Nigel Farage last turned up to vote in the House of Commons

NEW Marilyn Monroe, the Hollywood system, and the law of contract How Marilyn Monroe took on Twentieth Century Fox and defeated a major studio By me at @prospectmagazine.co.uk, on Monroe's centenary www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/7367...

Good morning. A month ago I noted an upcoming anniversary of a hero and I made a pitch, more in hope than expectation, that I write about their ‘legal‘ side. To my delight and surprise I was commissioned! And so in about 30 minutes it will be published. Am nervous, but I hope you enjoy it.

Pixar should do a TOY STORY about a group of Beanie Babies who've been in storage for over two decades and have turned into Gormenghast.

Ooooh.

This is what Trump's done to the people's house: A third of it is rubble. Another third is a cage match. What a metaphor.

I genuinely feel sick. A company reached out to me on IG, linking me to an AI version of myself. You can even ask "me" questions. They are also advertising it using an AI photo of me. They told me if I like it, they will give me free access... to my own fucking content that they stole. /1

This will be published online tomorrow. A little different from my usual stuff, but I hope you enjoy it. Still time to have a guess.

AI, minimally viable BS, and frail professionalism Pinsent Masons case. Summary for those who have not read it thoughts for those of you who have and can bear yet more commentary.

/2 And neither did the senior lawyers. The conclusion Is ‘embarrassing’ for the firm involved, but what if this wasn’t for a routine application but a criminal case which could lead to a miscarriage of justice? Further, esp. given the expense of legal fees, it undermines public trust in legal firms.

As Head of Library Services at a major international law firm I am horrified in the direction that my employers, and in fact the legal profession more widely, are headed with this. Also the amount of my team's time being wasted trying to track down hallucinated citations.

1/ I have no legal training but this is a fascinating case: a routine application by a reputable firm quotes a statute which does not exist and the judge’s suspicion is raised. Cue an absolute trainwreck when it transpires the junior lawyer didn’t bother checking the LLM hallucinations (cont)

Some excellent comments now on this thread and in quote posts.

Artificial Intelligence and legal work - a crucial case to read There was a routine court application which would usually go through on nod, but the judge suspected something was not right and asked questions, and this then came out. If you must use AI, be careful. www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWH...

As a lawyer with an interest in aviation and flight safety this is horribly reminiscent of the many aircraft incidents where a pilot disregarded both actual hazard warnings and increasingly obvious signs that things were starting to go badly.

Perhaps we should tell law students and trainees that a quick-fix easy-win way around spending pages chatting with a LLM, is to just look up the statutes and cases themselves.

A judge's report on a document submitted to the court, but based on an AI's false account of the law. The solicitor involved spent 59 pages' worth of chat with an LLM rather than looking up statute. Then used AI again to write an apology to the court. A fascinating story, coolly told.

You can always tell when The Stranglers have been in to return their books.

Artificial Intelligence and legal work - a crucial case to read There was a routine court application which would usually go through on nod, but the judge suspected something was not right and asked questions, and this then came out. If you must use AI, be careful. www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWH...

NEW Two interesting challenges to the Trump legal "settlement" slush fund One attacks the output: the legal power to set up the fund The other, brought by former judges, imaginatively attacks it from the other direction. At the Empty City substack: emptycity.substack.com/p/the-two-in...

Good sensible piece.

I wrote for the Art Newspaper on why charging 'foreigners' for museum entry can't practically work. www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/05/27/c...

NEW Two interesting challenges to the Trump legal "settlement" slush fund One attacks the output: the legal power to set up the fund The other, brought by former judges, imaginatively attacks it from the other direction. At the Empty City substack: emptycity.substack.com/p/the-two-in...

A university that does not understand the value of physical libraries staffed with real librarians is a university that does not understand how knowledge is kept.

This is niche, but there's nothing like discovering Edward Coke got a name wrong in his reports (after checking the actual record) then seeing centuries of legal scholars repeat the error.

Just love that UK politics is now wannabe PMs writing essays in response to essays written by former PMs like it's the mid-19th century all over again. Has UK politics peaked? Probably not.

Article now filed. Should be published online in a week or so.

Just had the green light for a longer piece on one of my heroes and their relationship with contract law. I am so happy, more in due course. Some of you may guess who it is, given upcoming anniversaries.

Tomorrow is Miles Davis’ 100th but everyone will be talking about Sonny Rollins Ghost of Miles: Well ain’t that a motherfucker

UK is more likely to be tipped into a skip. There is no legal or constitutional rule which requires a general election if a PM is changed mid-term. Since 1974 every UK PM has either entered or left office mid-term (or both). Silly, misleading stuff from a senior politician.

❗Leaving the ECHR would jeopardise the UK’s national security and hinder its efforts to tackle irregular migration, say a group of former justice secretaries and attorneys-general👇 🔗 www.ft.com/content/b3e4... via @financialtimes.com

More from me on the alleged Russian hack-and-leak operation against the Reform UK leader, including a link to an interview with The Guardian www.linkedin.com/posts/cyberc...

Pope Leo quoting Tolkien in his encyclical on AI seems like a pointed reference for the tech oligarchs who have appropriated LOTR for their own ends.

"for now we must treat this claim as unsubstantiated unless and until some further information emerges". @ciaranm.bsky.social, former Chief Executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, on Farage's claims of Russian hacking. www.linkedin.com/posts/cyberc...