| hot take: get rid of legal questions |
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I'm not gonna write this up because, for some reason, I don't have much enthusiasm right now. But I want to put it out there.
Legal questions are kinda silly! We have an unfortunate tendency to take interesting legislative debates and just redirect it all to judicial decisions. This has happened a frustrating amount of times. Guys! You can make laws about that! Votes! Rather than giving all the decisions to a few people! Weird legal issue? I don't care! We can vote on it as a region! Our Justices aren't gods! Or leave arbitrations up to the relevant official! When I said 'for some reason' earlier I lied. I did know the reason. It's because any enthusiasm I had for change was sapped by two months of judicial waterlogging where we just kinda sat waiting for the court to make a decision like a sad cat waiting to be given dinner when there's a full bowl right there. Why would I care after that? I'm posting now because I was reminded by a situation elsewhere. Right now, TEP is going through some weird shit where they just got rid of all their government changes since 2019 because they took a legal question to the absurd extreme rather than just listening to what people actually wanted and what worked. The legislative game is more interesting than the judicial game, and more people can actually play it!
(08-08-2022, 06:39 PM)Nakari Wrote: Our Justices aren't gods! The Court begs to differ. 
-Griffindor/Ebonhand
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(08-08-2022, 06:39 PM)Nakari Wrote: Our Justices aren't gods! Of course, how silly of me to portray myself as a god for the past five years. Former Delegate of the South Pacific
Posts outside High Court venues should be taken as those of any other legislator. I do not participate in the regional server, but I am happy to talk through instant messaging or on the forum. Legal Resources: THE MATT-DUCK Law Archive | Mavenu Diplomatic Archive | Rules of the High Court | Case Submission System | Online Rulings Consultation System
(08-08-2022, 06:39 PM)Nakari Wrote: I'm not gonna write this up because, for some reason, I don't have much enthusiasm right now. But I want to put it out there. So, so, so much of this! It's been a while, but the last time I ran an election it was totally bogged down in needless judicial wrangling, which was equally frustrating. To be clear, I don't think this is the fault of the justices, who are largely doing what we ask of them, but I think this plays into larger issues where we, as a region/legislature, wait for others to act rather than going for it ourselves. To piggyback back off Nakari — no one is a God! Not the justices, not the CRS, not the mods, not the admins! I don't know if getting rid legal questions is the right answer, but anything we can do to make the Assembly and elected officials more active in sorting out issues we have would be a huge boon, imo.
-tsunamy
[forum admin] Agree but why stop there? It's not just legal questions, man. Remove: The High Court, The Cabinet, The Prime Minister, The Coalition, The CG, The Nation States, The CRS, The LC, The Assembly, The XYZ, The TSP, The MOM, The Constitu-''Charter'', The FRS, the IRS and many more, dude. /srs.
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(08-10-2022, 02:53 AM)A bee Wrote: Uh huh.
-tsunamy
[forum admin]
I do think it's important to think about, if we were to go this direction, what kinds of questions would now need to be resolved by other officials and to make sure there's someone empowered to do that, lest we end up in highly ambiguous situations.
For LQs that relate to "well, how should X event that already happened be resolved?", it would give increased authority to the original official(s) who made those decisions. In a lot of cases, this would mean the Chair or the Election Commissioner. Are we okay with that? Imo, we probably should be, we should be electing people we have trust in to make those decisions. For LQs that relate to "well, what does the language in Y mean for this random hypothetical?", I think Nakari has a good point the Assembly can/should just come up with a new proposal to fix it. Minister of Foreign Affairs
General of the South Pacific Special Forces Ambassador to Balder Former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense ![[Image: rank_general.min.svg]](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheSouthPacific/tsp-graphics/master/mod/spsf/150w/rank_general.min.svg){kind=icon} ![[Image: updates_lifetime_3.min.svg]](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheSouthPacific/tsp-graphics/master/mod/spsf/150w/updates_lifetime_3.min.svg) ![[Image: detags_lifetime_4.min.svg]](https://github.com/TheSouthPacific/tsp-graphics/raw/master/mod/spsf/150w/detags_lifetime_4.min.svg) ![[Image: defenses_lifetime_4.min.svg]](https://github.com/TheSouthPacific/tsp-graphics/raw/master/mod/spsf/150w/defenses_lifetime_4.min.svg) ![[Image: ykXEqbU.png]](https://imgur.com/ykXEqbU.png)
The problem this is trying to address is cultural rather than legal. I think TSPers tend to go to the Court as a first resort far too often, but just changing which official we go to for dispute settlement won't actually do anything about the underlying problem. The best course of action is for the Court to reject petitions to hear cases that would be better resolved politically, even if they technically have the jurisdiction to hear them. We can offer guidance in our laws to do that, but it's ultimately up to them to prevent the Court from being used this way. In the real world, we have stronger political question doctrines and the concept of ripeness. We don't have super well-developed versions of this in our own jurisprudence, yet.
(08-21-2022, 02:23 PM)sandaoguo Wrote: The problem this is trying to address is cultural rather than legal. I think TSPers tend to go to the Court as a first resort far too often I think this is true (although something I have also been guilty of in the past), but also inevitable. Even if ideologically we generally have consensus that forcing things to the Court is bad, people have incentives based on their position in specific cases to file Court cases. (08-21-2022, 02:23 PM)sandaoguo Wrote: We can offer guidance in our laws to do that, but it's ultimately up to them to prevent the Court from being used this way. I'd be interested in seeing a draft amendment to our current Court procedures that goes to vote alongside total-Court-abolition and LQ-specific-abolition. Minister of Foreign Affairs
General of the South Pacific Special Forces Ambassador to Balder Former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense |
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