Silent Witness

Morality Repealed

TASK I. Read the text.

Ratified in January 1919, the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution prohibited "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors" within the United States. A little less than 15 years later, the 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition. Viewed as a triumph of morality by its backers, Prohibition forced a double standard on many tippling politicians, among them the next US president, Warren G.Harding. As a senator in 1919, he had spearheaded passage in the Senate of some tough laws to enforce the 18th Amendment. Two years later Harding brought many of his drinking buddies with him as advisers into the White House.

TASK 2. Find in the text the words that correspond to the following definitions.

- to end, cancel, revoke (a law);

- supporters;

- severe or uncompromisingly determined;

- to cause (a rule or law) to be carried out effectively;

- persons who give recommendations, information, warning;

- to approve or confirm formally;

- to serve as leader or leading force of companions, partners;

- to forbid by authority;

- an action of getting approval by legislature;

- being obsessed by alcoholic drinks;

- change or revision;

- a person experienced or engaged in politics;

- the large-scale making of wares by hand or by machinery.

TASK 1. Read the text.

A slander case in Thailand was once settled by a witness who said nothing at all. According to the memoirs of Justice Gerald Sparrow, a 20th century British barrister who served as a judge in Bangkok, the case involved two rival Chinese merchants, Pu Lin and Swee Ho. Pu Lin had stated sneeringly at a party that Swee Ho's new wife, Li Bua, was merely a decoration to show how rich her husband was. Swee Ho, he said, could no longer "please the ladies".

Swee Ho sued for slander, claiming Li Bua was his wife in every sense -and he won his case, along with substantial damages, without a word of evidence being taken. Swee Ho's lawyer simply put the blushing bride in the witness box. She had decorative, gold-painted fingernails, to be sure, but she was also quite obviously pregnant.

TASK 2. Find in the text the words that correspond to the following definitions.

- the utterance of false charges which do damage to another's reputation;

- a lawyer who has the right to plead as an advocate in an English superior court;

- sb. who tries to compete with and be superior to another;

- considerable in quantity; significantly large;

- information used (by a tribunal) to arrive at the truth;

- an enclosure in which a witness testifies in court.

TASK 3. What do you think gold-painted fingernails symbolise in China?

Дата добавления: 2014-12-29