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Apologies again your honour, this past week ended up being much busier than expected and I was unable to deal with this. If I could request a few more days I can address this during the weekend.
The Court would like to clarify that it has requested that all evidence and information be provided. Whether that evidence is provided for the public record, or privately for the exclusive consideration of the Permanent Justice, is something that can be discussed with the Court at the discretion of the Legislator Committee, just as any privacy considerations and concerns can be discussed as well. However, the order issued by the Court must still be followed with the utmost promptitude and reasonability.
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
Your honour,
This case is a problematic one to address. By its very nature nearly all the evidence involved is confidential in some form, and I cannot release much of the evidence or at least its specifics publicly without compromising the privacy or integrity of one or more parties involved in this case. As a result I must submit much if it privately for your exclusive consideration. Furthermore this is a sensitive situation, as it involves a current or former RL relationship between the users involved in the case. I am therefore forced to apply further discretion in the interest of minimizing OOC harm. As part of this I have privately sent the details of several pieces of evidence found in the investigation, such as IP records. I first became aware of the potential double legislator issue on December 19th, 2017. This was before the appointment of any member of the Legislator Committee. Upon becoming aware of the issue I notified other members of the government (as a member of the Council on Regional Security), asking the Forum Admins to investigate the matter. To my knowledge the Cabinet has been considering appointing Griffindor to the Legislator Committee at the time, so I informed them of the potential situation as well and asked them to hold off on any nomination until we could investigate the claim. The investigation was conducted mostly by the forum admins, in particular Sandaoguo, as they had the necessary access to posting IPs. We could only investigate the IP of votes done using posts (e.g. forums) as the poll votes (e.g. Assembly votes) did not record IP. During the investigation Griffindor was contacted by Sandaoguo under intentionally false circumstances, where Griffindor would confirm many of the core facts of the case. The results of the investigation were sent to the Legislator Committee and Chair of the Assembly by Sandaoguo on January 19th, 2018. The Committee did not react immediately as while we believed beyond a reasonable doubt that Griffindor committed the acts he was accused of, there was uncertainty about what legal actions we could take. His actions was not true multi-ing, and the law was poorly defined for an unanticipated situation like this. The Legislator Committee then released its response on February 1st, 2018 under pressure from other parts of the government to resolve the situation before the Cabinet elections began. During the investigation it was found that several IPs were used both by Lavoret and Griffindor. According to the results I received from the forum administration one of these shared IPs were from a mobile device, which suggests the two may have been logged on to from a mobile device in addition to Griffindor's computer. Access to Lavoret's account appears to have been granted voluntarily and unknowingly, with Lavoret creating her account on Griffindor's computer and potentially having used it on that computer on some later occasion. This fact has been corroborated by IP evidence and testimony. Lavoret and Griffindor voted using the same IP in three different elections: The April/May 2017 Chair elections, the June 2017 Cabinet elections, and the June 2017 Chair elections. There is also further suspected double voting in the May 2017 APCRC elections; Lavoret voting using one of the known shared IPs, however Griffindor voted using a school IP in this situation. For the reasons mentioned above we cannot check Assembly votes, however given the evidence there is reasonable grounds to believe the same double voting may have happened there too. From the evidence gathered the bodies involved, including the CRS, forum administration, and Legislator Committee found sufficient grounds to believe that Griffindor was using Lavoret's account to double vote on multiple occasions, without Lavoret's knowledge and in contravention of TSP law.
For Immediate Release
08 April 2018 The Court provides notice to the general public that the ruling on HCRR1802: Review of the Revocation of Legislator Status of Griffindor13 will be released on 10 April 2018 at 12:00 EST. The Court will thereafter entertain questions and doubts regarding the legal reasoning expressed in its ruling, and the process it followed in the consideration of the legal question, but it will not consider questions regarding the political ramifications of the same, nor will it express opinions of a political nature on any other unrelated subject. 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
HIGH COURT OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC
- HCRR1802 - Review of the Revocation of Legislator Status of Griffindor13 APPEAL TO CONTEST THE REVOCATION OF LEGISLATOR OF GRIFFINDOR13 ON 01 FEBRUARY 2018 10 APRIL 2018 Justice KRINGLE delivered the Opinion.
Summary of the Verdict It is the opinion of the Court that the removal of legislator status from Griffindor13 is the result of a fair, lawful and non-abusive investigation, and will therefore be upheld. This is the result of an analysis of the Legislator Committee Act, particularly the Good Behaviour Clause, and of the confidential evidence provided by the Legislator Committee. At the same time, given that additional evidence has been uncovered, the Legislator Committee is ordered to consider this new evidence as part of an additional investigation, and decide whether it affects in any way the decision to remove legislator status from Griffindor13.
Similarly to Review of the Ban on Malayan Singapura [HCRR1801], the Court takes possible violations of Article III rights very seriously. It seeks to examine the facts and ensure that, whatever process was followed, it was followed properly, lawfully and conducted by the proper institutions. This is the standard employ in the present case, with the goal of ensuring that Griffindor13 was removed from the Assembly not on a whim, but rather because the law so permitted.
I
A. Confidentiality of the Evidence
Given the fact that much evidence related to this case remains confidential, at the request of the Legislator Committee, the Court will not enter into detail regarding the evidence it reviewed. Instead, it will offer a general overview of the facts and events as they happen and as they are publicly known, and will make references to particular pieces of evidence as reasonable and appropriate. In all circumstances, the Court will make every effort to keep the confidentiality of sources and to avoid disseminating any information that, due to its very nature or to the existence of forum moderation policies, should not be disseminated. The above notwithstanding, the Court has reviewed all the evidence made available to it by both parties to this case, and has duly considered it in its deliberations. A lack of mention to a particular piece of evidence, either explicit or implicit, does not necessarily imply that it was not fully and appropriately considered by the Court. B. Background Griffindor13 was removed from the Assembly on February 01 on grounds of bad behaviour, when Farengeto posted a statement on behalf of the Legislator Committee and the Council on Regional Security. This statement, while brief, indicated that "several IPs used by Lavoret were shared with those used by Griffindor" and further said that both accounts often voted similarly and under the same IP. Based on this statement and subsequent research, the charge appears to be not that Griffindor13 and Lavoret were the same person, as some initially believed, but rather that Griffindor13 used his access to the Lavoret account to cast votes and improperly influence the Assembly. That same day, Griffindor13 expressed his intent to appeal the decision before the Court, which he did on February 02. In his appeal, Griffindor indicated that, while he acknowledged the power of the Committee to remove legislator status under certain circumstances, he believed that the investigation on his person was not thorough enough, and also suggested that the law was unclear on the exact meaning of the term "good behaviour". He requested that the Court review his case, and determine whether the process had been sufficiently thorough. In a private testimony to the Court, Farengeto indicated that "[the Committee] believed that the disgraceful act of using another person's account vote multiple times (...) represented extremely poor behaviour as a legislator". He further added, this time as his personal stance, that the investigation had been sufficiently thorough, considering the scope and detailed nature of the evidence, and therefore disagreed with the claim that the inquiry had not been thorough enough. Hence, the decision by the Committee invoke its authority under Article 3, Section 1 of the Legislator Committee Act to rule that Griffindor13, had failed to display "good behaviour". II
A. Good Behaviour Clause
The Legislator Committee Act establishes and empowers the Legislator Committee, an institution entrusted with the administration of the granting and removal of legislator status. As explained in Article 3, two main requirements to the maintenance of legislator status are "active membership and good behaviour". While active membership is arguably defined in subsequent sections, Griffindor13 is correct in arguing that the Act offers no definitive definition or guidance for what constitutes "good behaviour". It must be pointed out, however, that such a definition may not be required, if the law is applied in a strict sense. While certain moderation actions, for example a removal from the region by the Local Council, are subject to stringent requirements and limitations, as specified in Article III, Section 3 of the Charter, there is no similar provision for legislator status. Instead, as far as a reasonable reader could conclude, the Legislator Committee is free to determine what qualifies as good behaviour, and when such conditions have been breached. This is not so difficult to believe, given that the Committee is already empowered to set "additional legitimation steps" for applicants beyond those strictly mandated by the Legislator Committee Act, as explained in Article 2, Section 4. This leads to the impression that, at least to some extent, the Committee has the authority to exercise discretion in how it performs its work. That does not explain, however, whether the Committee should explain what exactly constitutes good behaviour or what acts would presumably run contrary to it. It is the belief of the Court, as will be explained subsequently, that the voluntary and selective nature of the Assembly plays a key role in this situation, and affords this case a characteristic that was missing in prior cases, particularly Review of the Ban on Malayan Singapura [HCRR1801]. B. Thoroughness of the Investigation While the Court will not discuss either the specific evidence to which it had access, nor the specific steps that were taken by the Legislator Committee or the Council on Regional Security as part of their investigation into this matter, it remains fairly confident that proper steps were taken to obtain a testimony from Griffindor13, and that IP evidence was properly obtained and evaluated. The Court was subsequently given access by Griffindor13 to additional evidence that did not form part of the original investigation, and might have affected its outcome, or at least have required a closer evaluation. However, this evidence originated subsequent to the statement of revocation, and therefore the Committee and the Council had no reasonable way to access it. In that regard, any evidence subsequently obtained, while interesting and worthy of an investigation, does not affect the thoroughness of the investigation as originally conducted, with the evidence that was available to these institutions at the time. III
This case rests on the possible need to define the term good behaviour and the question of how thorough and appropriate the original investigation was. In reality, however, these two issues are much simpler than one might initially anticipate.
The Court previously ruled in Review of the Ban on Malayan Singapura [HCRR1801] that the Local Council must have specific guidelines in place regarding the way in which moderation in the Regional Message Board will be enforced. Such guidelines, while undoubtedly helpful, are not required in this case, for a variety of reasons. One such reason is that the penalty for bad behaviour is considerably less consequential than a regional ban. A ban completely removes the member from the region, whereas a removal of legislator status, while a significant step, does not prevent the member from continuing to participate in the various aspects of regional life. With greater penalties come more stringent requirements, and this also works in the opposite direction, when it comes to less radical, though no less significant, penalties. A second reason is that, residency in the region is a protected right under Article III of the Charter, legislator status has no such explicit protection. There are inferences to be made, based on certain provisions and the overall spirit of the laws, but the Court has not been asked to make such inferences, and will therefore refrain from doing so. Instead, the Court does need to point out that, in the absence of provisions that explicitly protect a legislator from being removed, the requirements for such act to happen will tend to be less stringent. Most significantly, perhaps, is the fact that Assembly is a body whose membership is voluntary and subject to entry requirements, whereas residency is not usually voluntary, and participation in the region in whatever form is often an unavoidable activity. A legislator has made the explicit decision to put themselves under the provisions of the Legislator Committee Act, whereas a resident has no choice on the applicability of the Border Control Act. They fall under its provision the moment they are created in the region, and therefore the standards for its implementation must be higher. A resident may not have a clear idea of the fine line that divides a snarky comment from spam or trolling, and needs guidance and warnings in certain cases, to understand where the limit stands. Such is not the case with a legislator, who can easily infer that using two separate accounts to obtain two votes, contrary to the single vote from every other legislator, is a serious violation of the spirit of the law. Both situations are therefore not comparable, and lead the Court to believe that good behaviour may well fall under the basic precepts of common sense to be exercised by every legislator, and under the general discretion afforded to the Legislator Committee for the efficient execution of its duties, provided that such discretion must be reasonable and remain consistent with the overall values of the Coalition.. As for the investigation itself, it is the belief of the Court that it was conducted adequately and consistent with all reasonable expectations of due process. In view of the above facts, and considering all the evidence and investigative details that are not subject to the public record, the Court has elected to uphold the removal of legislator status from Griffindor13, on the grounds that the Legislator Committee conducted a fair and lawful investigation, based on the evidence available to it at the time, and given that it is fully empowered to exercise a reasonable discretion to when a legislator has failed to engage in good behaviour. This discretion must not be abusive or discriminatory in its nature, and the Court has verified that this case displayed no such violations. In so upholding, however, the Court also orders the Legislator Committee to consider the additional evidence that will be referred to it by this bench, to ensure that all relevant facts have been considered. This Court will not be concerned, unless a further appeal is made, with the ultimate result of this additional investigation. It is so ordered. 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 |
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