Honourable Justice
I am posting this Legal Question to seek clarification on Article 3.2.2 of the Charter, which states:
Quote:2. The Chair of the Assembly has the clerical duty to maintain the Charter, Code of Laws, and all subsidiary documents, ensuring that all laws comport with proper standards and formatting, and all minor changes made are publicly recorded.
I understand that the High Court has previously, in
HCLC1408, given its judgement that the Chair of the Assembly has discretion in certain limited circumstances. Hence, my question towards the Court is pertaining to the extent which this discretion applies.
More specifically, can the Court clarify what constitutes a 'minor change' as stated in Article 3.2.2?
In addition, can the Court clarify whether amendments such as
- this, which seeks to ensure the uniformity of legal terminology, given that the relevant changes have been adopted by a recent Great Council
- this, which seeks to rectify a typographical error in its reference to legislation,
would constitute a 'minor change', thereby allowing the Chair of the Assembly to use the powers that have been accorded to him by law to amend the relevant legislation to ensure accuracy and uniformity in legislation? Or would it be mandatory for these changes to be adopted by a vote of the Assembly?
Thank you.
If it pleases the court, as the author of this discretionary authority law, may I offer my understanding of it:
The law was written to give the Chair broad authority in fixing issues that arise from amending the Charter and Code of Laws, without requiring votes. This implicitly includes article renumbering, and updating cross-referenced terminology and laws. The goal of the law was to prevent unnecessary votes on minor changes that were overlooked in the amendment process. It should be wholly up to the Chair and the political process to determine what constitutes such changes, as it's impossible for any neutral court to come up with a universally applicable standard.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Unfortunately due to recent changes in regional law we no longer have laws on the submission and procedures for legal questions and thus I have no legal ability to handle this question until such time that the Court Procedures can be amended.
Procedures have been sitting in the Assembly for just over 3 weeks. Perhaps the Permanent Justice should comment and move to vote, or propose his own, then?
Now that we have procedures the Court finds this question Justicable are will hear it. While the Court reviews the issue, interested parties are welcome to submit an amocus brief on the subject.
The Court also requests that the Petitioner update the links in their Question.
Honourable Justice
I would like to inform this Court that I have updated the links in the original post.
Thank you.
I invite the Court to issue a judgement on this Legal Question at its earliest convenience
HCLQ1601
Janurary 15th, 2016
Petitioner
Awe
Presiding Justice
Farengeto
Honourable Justice
I am posting this Legal Question to seek clarification on Article 3.2.2 of the Charter, which states:
Quote:2. The Chair of the Assembly has the clerical duty to maintain the Charter, Code of Laws, and all subsidiary documents, ensuring that all laws comport with proper standards and formatting, and all minor changes made are publicly recorded.
I understand that the High Court has previously, in
HCLC1408, given its judgement that the Chair of the Assembly has discretion in certain limited circumstances. Hence, my question towards the Court is pertaining to the extent which this discretion applies.
More specifically, can the Court clarify what constitutes a 'minor change' as stated in Article 3.2.2?
In addition, can the Court clarify whether amendments such as
- this, which seeks to ensure the uniformity of legal terminology, given that the relevant changes have been adopted by a recent Great Council
- this, which seeks to rectify a typographical error in its reference to legislation,
would constitute a 'minor change', thereby allowing the Chair of the Assembly to use the powers that have been accorded to him by law to amend the relevant legislation to ensure accuracy and uniformity in legislation? Or would it be mandatory for these changes to be adopted by a vote of the Assembly?
Thank you.
Ruling
Having examined both the word of the law and the intent of the law, as debated
here, the court issues the following verdict.
It is the belief of the court that a believes a "minor change" as referenced in Article 3.2.2 of the Charter to constitute any changes of the law that alter the text for the purposes of a consistent appearance and formatting of the law, corrects typographical errors in a law (including but not limited to spelling and grammatical errors), correct erroneous numeration of law that ensure consistent numeration of the laws and the correctness of references to a law, or any other changes to ensure the proper consistency of the law as long as such changes do not otherwise alter the purpose law in any other way including changes to meaning, organization, or intended wording of the law not approved by the Assembly.
With this definition in mind, the Court finds the following in regards to the second half of your question:
- This proposal corrects a typographical mistake caused by the change in a title but does not alter the individual originally referenced and thus this court believes it to constitute a minor change.
- This proposal corrects a mistake caused by remuneration of the laws that remains consistent with the intended purpose of the law, thus this court believes it to constitute a minor change.