Your honors,

for reasons that the Court is aware of, I did not submit an amicus brief in the timespan granted for their submission. I ask that this short submission, despite its tardiness, is received. I have no intention of addressing the matter set out by Petitioner, but rather a derivative matter; this hopefully will not impact the substance of the impending ruling (which must certainly be in the drafting stage already), but at most some of its periphery components (and, depending on the outcome of the primary ask, this brief may be moot in its entirety).

In summary: It is my opinion that the Court is obligated to determine, as part of its ruling on this case, whether there is any reason to believe that the Chair may have acted with malintent. It is also my opinion that the Chair did not act with malintent.

Petitioner states that Chair Nakari stands "in wilful defiance" of the law in their original submission. This accusation on its own does not carry any significance in a legal fashion. However, should the Court find the Chair's actions unlawful, and does not address Petitioner's allegation of malintent, it can be inferred that the Court does not disagree with the assessment of malintent. That does carry legal significance for multiple reasons. First, it renders the Chair subject to recall on the basis of the "abuse of authority" criterion listed in Charter XI.1.a. Second, it renders the Chair subject to criminal accusation as per Criminal Code 1.7, and the petitioner of that charge will be protected from being charged with vexatiousness even if the case is brought simply for political purposes (such as during an ongoing reelection effort).

If the Chair did not in fact act with malintent, the above would constitute an unreasonable burden on her; a legal remedy through the Court is still available to her, but the burden would exist for a non negligible time frame regardless.

While the Court is principally a reactive rather than a proactive institution, the Judicial Act nonetheless gives the Court much freedom to act proactively within the context of a case (see Judicial Act 2.1.d and 5.1, for example). This is very much by design, as is well known. The Court may answer questions, or make statements, or do a variety of other things beyond the simple asks of a given submitted case. Examples can be found all over the Online Consultation Ruling System.

One such example also serves as precedent to inform this brief. In HCRR1804, Justice Sandaoguo answers not just the Petitioner's question but also delves into whether defamatory statements were made, even though defamation was not a crime. Justice Sandaoguo used that not only to reinforce the principal conclusion of that review, but by doing so, also thereby cleared Technolandia of a possible undue burden not too different from the kinds of burden that Nakari would meet as described above.

Given the undue burden with only late possibilities for remedy, the precedent from HCRR1804, as well as Judicial Act 2.1.b mandate that "Justices of the High Court shall [...] consider the impact of Court rulings carefully to ensure that, whenever possible, no individual is empowered to exploit rulings of the Court", it is clear to me that the Court must make a determination on Nakari's malintent for the purposes of this case.

That all being said, I do not believe that there is malintent on the part of the Chair. First, as the Chair noted in her testimony, she herself voted for the amendment and does not stand to gain from its failure to pass. Second, the Chair's testimony clearly portrays her good faith interpretation of the law; that's not to say that her interpretation is necessarily correct (it may well not be), but it is an interpretation reached in ostensible good faith nonetheless. Third, the principal argument for the Chair's interpretation, as laid out in her testimony, is corroborated by Discord conversations in #legislators-lounge (starting here); these conversations are contemporary with the actual decision to use a 60% threshold, which predates this court case and the issue even becoming ripe in the first place.

Thank you for your time.