Transcript of the above video:

The title of this video probably seems a little strange. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who is a, well he worked for quite some time on submarines in the United States Navy. He was one time telling me about the phenomenon in the Navy that the Captain is "God Underway" meaning once a boat is sort of in the water if you will and off on a mission or whatever, that Captain is effectively God for lack of a better term. Whatever decisions they decide to make, whatever orders they decide the issue, it's just, that is beyond reproach, you just do it basically. 

I was thinking about this in the context because I have had a lot of talks with lay people recently about really complex legal matters and they have these ideas that a) the law is rigid which is a constant, constant conceit of lay people, it just is. "Oh I have read it so therefore it is this!" Well no law is interpretive so when it is applied you have to deal with the subjective interpretations as well as the objective interpretations of the adjudicator, so that is one.

The other thing is at the end of the day it is the Judge in any proceeding, you can say this in Thailand, you can say this in the United States, you can say this in the Common Law tradition, the Judge has a massive bearing on the case. I mean to the point of the notion of "God Underway" is not too far off. Now admittedly in the Common Law context, yeah there's a jury and they have a major function but regarding questions of law, the Judge could be arguably "God Underway", that is fully within their bailiwick and the decisions that they make. Yeah, they are subject to appeal possibly but in the proceeding you are pretty well stuck with whatever their adjudication is. So again a lot of lay people we have talked to here recently, talk to us in this kind of absolutist terms about the way law works and things. It is like, no, first of all it is interpretive and secondly, it's going to at the end of the day, be up to a Judge and you need to take that into consideration when making decisions regarding how one structures one's affairs from a legal perspective.