I propose the following amendment:

Quote:1. The High Court shall consist of four Court Justices.

2. The Court Justices shall select one of themselves to serve as Chief Justice.
3. Three Justices of the High Court, determined by a rotating schedule created by themselves, shall be responsible for determining innocence or guilt in criminal cases, and issuing sentence.
4. The High Court may declare any whole General Law, or portions within such law, that conflict with the Charter defunct, and to reconcile contradictions within the Charter.
5. The High Court may compel appropriate restitution in the event that any government institution or public officials' actions to be in contravention of the Bill of Rights in response to a Legal Question.
6. The High Court holds the sole power to remove citizenship outside of regular legislation that outlines reasonable upkeep requirements or security imperatives.
7. Procedures for the Election of High Court Justices will be defined in the Code of Laws.
8. The Court Justices are not prohibited from joining the Assembly or any associated organization in the South Pacific.

This amendment is as a result of people mentioned the Court having powers that we don't actually have (see here and here), so this is in response to that. Bill of Rights violations are not a criminal offence, because punishing a public official for violating the BoR will not help the petitioner at all. Furthermore, no appropriate punishment can be given, so undoing the damage through compelling that the official take action seems like the most logical measure.

This is also a step back from the 'outrightly declaring X illegal' bit in the High Court document, which I believe was made to have similar intentions, but was perhaps too harshly phrased, and could have been abused by the Court, simply by saying that 'X is illegal, because I said so', even though X may not have been illegal in the Criminal Code. I hope this amendment will circumvent that issue.

Credits to Kris for realising this.

I still fear this is just an attempt to undo the security declaration by arguing that it "somehow" contravenes the BoR. Once again, you can always find anything contravenes the BoR if you squint and give a lot of latitude to the rulings; that's why I'm not at all confident in giving this power to the courts. While, your team of justices may be trustworthy and straight-forward, this is the same institution that was presided over by Chief Justice Belschaft for nearly half a decade and he would have used this latitude and this power to rule whatever the hell he liked.

Appropriate restitution in the case of Belschaft would mean undoing the security threat declaration - which still effectively accomplishes what us in the Assembly fear you're trying to do. Really, I don't think you're going to go anywhere with this unless the Court in preparation reviews Belschaft's security risk declaration and finds it passes the BoR and constitution. Because no supporter of the declaration here is going to hand the courts the power to just go and undo that particular security risk because this court feels Belschaft's rights have been violated - I've been a court justice for years and I don't see how anyone could logically argue that that is the case, but I know that as a justice, you have the latitude to argue your passions, not simply the law - and I fear giving the court that power.

Belschaft is no longer is citizen, and reportedly no longer maintains a nation in the region. The defamation case he raised against several members of the community has also been closed. To be very honest, while I do not speak for my fellow Justices, I cannot be bothered about him.

We cannot stoop to a level of basing our judgements on being 'Belschaft or not Belschaft'. We cannot give him leverage in such a manner. Perhaps not now, but sooner or later, we'd need to move on from this. Can we please have an objective discussion about this? I would also welcome any alternative suggestions with regards to the wording of this clause.

This is not an issue about recent events, rather, it is from these events that we set the precedent for the future, and  think the most appropriate manner to do this by, is to codify the above into law.

Quote:This is not an issue about recent events, rather, it is from these events that we set the precedent for the future, and think the most appropriate manner to do this by, is to codify the above into law.

There's still going to be the fear that the court will use it to undo the security declaration against Belschaft - given your suspicious timing on this.

If the court would hear a legal question on whether the use of the security risk declaration was consistent with the BoR, I'd be less concerned and more confident about pursuing reform here.

(03-01-2015, 12:16 AM)Unibot Wrote:

Quote:This is not an issue about recent events, rather, it is from these events that we set the precedent for the future, and  think the most appropriate manner to do this by, is to codify the above into law.

There's still going to be the fear that the court will use it to undo the security declaration against Belschaft - given your suspicious timing on this.

If the court would hear a legal question on whether the use of the security risk declaration was consistent with the BoR, I'd be less concerned and more confident about pursuing reform here.

If you'd submit a Legal Question on that, we'd hear it

Thanks. I'll get on that.

Can I just get some other opinions on this?

I'm not wholly opposed to this. I think it becomes a question of where we want the final decision to lie.

My fear with giving it to the court is that ‚ since we're all amateur legislators that legislation might not be 100% airtight and the court could rule on technicalities.

On the other hand, the court could allow make unpopular decisions thereby preventing "lynch mob" style acts.

I honestly could go either way.

I'm worried that the Bill of Rights is too vague to give justices too much latitude with "restitution".

I'm with Uni on this. Exactly what is "appropriate restitution"? What would be an example?