Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) is an expression often used in the computer world, but it can also apply to the legal world.
Take, for example, the jaw-dropping legal opinion expressed by David Beatty, professor emeritus of the University of Toronto Law School, when he wrote in last week’s Globe and Mail that vaccine mandates “are justified as a matter of community self-defence and justice.”
Professor Beatty has apparently swallowed an enormous dollop of intellectual garbage, so it’s not surprising that his output is a tad rotten.
The first of his defective premises is that “COVID-19 is a serial killer” that “has taken the lives of more than five million people.” He never cites the source of his data, so one can’t help wondering whether he is completely ignorant of the chicanery that has been exposed behind statistics such as this.