Response to Amicus Curiae Briefs

The amicus briefs submitted to this Court by Hileville and Sopo offer fantastical interpretations of law that are not rooted in reality.

Part 1: Response to Hileville

In his brief, Hileville makes the assertion that Article 9.1 is not violated, because the domain “thesouthpacific.org” is in use and points to a forum. In my original filing to this Court, I entertained a nonsensical interpretation of law, hoping to beat nonsense at its own game. In this response, I will do away with that interpretative strategy.

It is a simple fact that when the Assembly voted to amend Article 9.1 to replace “thesouthpacific.x10.mx” with “thesouthpacific.org”, it voted to simply alter the stated URL for the forums in use. The accompanying resolution, which holds binding legal status as a General Law, leaves no room for interpretation as to what the change in domain entailed.

The Assembly authorized, according to Article 9 procedures, a move of the forums to a new server, owned by Tsunamy and operated by Sandaoguo. Upon that move, Article 9.1 would be amended to read the correct domain.

To accept Hileville’s argument is to accept that the Assembly authorized any forum that happened to exist at “thesouthpacific.org”, regardless of who made them, when they were made, or if the Assembly itself had any say in altering which forums existed at the domain. Not only does the 8 December 2015 resolution show that such interpretation is flatly wrong, that interpretation is simply unreasonable. Articles 9.1 and 9.2 exist exactly to prevent any person – be they Delegate, Cabinet member, admin, citizen, or invader – to create a new forum and claim it as the Official Regional Forum. The Assembly did not write this clause into the Charter to allow the owner of the domain to decide, one random day, to point the domain away from the Official Regional Forum and to whatever they wished and allow the owner to claim whatever exists at the domain as the Official Regional Forum. If Hileville, the owner of the domain, redirected it to Facebook, that does not mean Facebook is the Official Regional Forum.

The Assembly enshrined into the Charter the location of the Official Regional Forum to ensure that it could not change without their approval, upon the whim of the domain owner, or any other person.

Hileville also argues, disingenuously, that the Zetaboards forum are not really new forums. The Charter does not explicitly define what software is used to deliver a forum at the stated domain. “Thesouthpacific.org” points to a forum, therefore no move to a new forum has occurred. The Cabinet’s own statement betrays the Delegate’s novel legal theory. Their statement is linked, of course, in large text at the top of the Zetaboards forum, as “Cabinet Statement on New Forums.” The statement’s official title is “On the change of forums.” The Cabinet there seems to believe that they did indeed create a new forum and move to it, but the Delegate here argues to the Court that no new forums were created and the Official Regional Forum wasn’t moved, and thus Article 9.2 has not been violated. The Cabinet must now find themselves in a particularly awkward situation.

Hileville further argues for an expansive view of Executive Policy, one which allows the Cabinet to turn the Executive Policy clause of the Charter into wholesale dictatorial power.

The Court here does not have to reach any decision on the extent to which Executive Policy may be exercised, because Hileville is wrong that no law exists in this area. Article 9 is the law of the land on the Forum and the Administration Team. The Charter is the supreme law of our region. If the Cabinet wishes for there to be a procedure for the removal of administrators, it must amend the Charter to allow for it. The Cabinet cannot use their Executive Policy power to alter a fundamental foundation of the region created in the Charter. To accept Hileville’s argument on Executive Policy is to accept that the Cabinet may add anything to the Charter at will.

Hileville points to the 29 March 2015 Executive Policy on the contested election for Minister of Foreign Affairs (http://104.131.34.7/thread-1910.html) as support for his argument. The two actions are not equal. The March Executive Policy did not attempt to write into the Charter a procedure that did not exist. The Cabinet in March enacted an Executive Policy regarding an area of election law (which is a simple General Law) that did not exist: what to do when the results of an election are being contested in court, but a candidate is claiming victory and demanding to sit on the Cabinet? In that situation, the Cabinet acted to prevent Wolf from sitting on the Cabinet when it there was likelihood that he did not, in fact, win the election. A decision by the High Court relating to when citizenship is lost resulted in the Court effectively declaring that he did not, in fact, win the election.

There were no laws to point to for addressing a genuine constitutional crisis. Had the Cabinet not exacted that Executive Policy, Wolf would have sat on the Cabinet in violation of the Charter. In the case at hand, there are laws in place to enact the Cabinet’s desired policy. They wanted a new forum, and the Charter is explicit in the procedure required to establish a new forum.

The remainder of Hileville’s brief regards the validity of Kringalia’s citizenship. I believe I presented a solid legal case in my original filing, that Hileville has not offered any real challenge to that case, and thus there is no need for me to respond further. I will state, however, that his plain assertion that the Charter does not allow an administrator to “block the Vice Delegate from removing the citizenship of any player” is currently a question under consideration by this Court in a separate Legal Question.

Part 2: Response to Sopo

Before I begin, I must protest the use of Merriam Webster as any kind of legal authority on the English language. That position is reserved to the Oxford English Dictionary, the most canonical collection of English words available. No court worth its weight in salt would use a lesser dictionary.

That aside, in his response, Sopo makes an argument more incredulous than his co-Cabinet member. Despite being able to post freely, to roleplay, to engage in debate, to hold elections, and a plethora of other activities that were ongoing, Sopo argues that the Official Regional Forum was “permanently unavailable” because, essentially, the Cabinet did not like the administrators not removing Kringalia’s citizenship. This argument is so out there that the Court should dismiss it outright. But nonetheless, I will counter.

Common sense provides more than enough meaning to what it means for the forums to cease to exist or become permanently unavailable. If the forum literally does not exist – no database, no threads, no posts, nothing – then it has ceased to exist. If the forum cannot be accessed through any means – perhaps because of an unfixable server error, a ban placed by the host, a rogue administrator disabling access, or similar – then it is permanently unavailable.

Sopo also argues that due to the administrators not removing Kringalia’s citizenship, a “valid vote on any topic” was “almost impossible.” I feel it prudent to remind the Minister that he was elected under a vote held after Kringalia supposedly should have lost his citizenship. Perhaps his own election falls under the realm of the possible when all other votes are “almost impossible.”

Sopo then continues to impugn the character of the Administration Team, engaging in a wild conspiracy that perhaps they would alter election results, edit database entries, and flagrantly add and remove citizenship masking to manipulate votes. If Sopo has any proof of this conspiracy, I’m sure the Court and the Assembly would want to see it.

What Sopo and Hileville both miss in their assertions that the Administration Team violated the law by not removing Kringalia’s citizenship upon the Vice Delegate’s vote, is the fact that Kringalia had posted within the window to ensure his citizenship. Of course, if the Administration Team did remove his citizenship, they would certainly have been violating the Bill of Rights.

Lastly, Sopo engages in a lesson on property law. But perhaps not a very good one. Not that American or English property law is an authoritative source of meaning to our Charter, but the analogy is not a particularly good one. The Administration Team and the Cabinet have a legal disagreement over the validity of a handful of posts made in the private administrator forum. This does not amount to any member of the Cabinet, let alone any citizen, being effectively or actually prevented from using the forum. Simply because the Cabinet did not like the Administration Team’s opinion does not allow it to avoid the judicial system, or to ignore or violate the Charter.


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I would like to further note that neither of the briefs referenced above have been posted in both venues.