Amendment to Law 22

Grosseschnauzer

Grosseschnauzer

TNPer
A bill to amend Law 22 on enumeration of prohibited acts

I.
A new Section 6 of Law 22 is enacted as follows:
Section 6. Enforcement of Oaths

A. A failure to act in conformity with the sworn affirmations contained in (1) the oath of office, as prescribed in Law 1 for all government officials, elected or appointed, or (2) the oath required of all applicants for membership in the Regional Assembly, as prescribed in Law 28, or (3) any other oath prescribed elsewhere in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or the Legal Code, are prohibited acts.
B. The Regional Assembly hereby declares that the illegal status of acts that are deemed by judicial decision to be a failure to act in conformity with the sworn affirmations of the oaths described in paragraph A of this Section are not affected by the enactment of this Section.
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II.
The language currently contained in paragraph B3 of Section 5 of Law 22 is transferred and redesignated as paragraph A of a new Section 7 of Law 22, as follows:

Section 7. Penalties
A. Punishment for the commission of these prohibited acts may include any penalty deemed appropriate by law, including ejection or banning by the Delegate, or restrictions or banning by official forum administration, or both.
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III.
A new paragraph B of new Section 7 of Law 22 is hereby enacted as follows:

B. If any other act is declared a prohibited or criminal act in the Constitution, Bill of Rights or Legal Code in addition to this Law, punishment for the commission of such prohibited acts may include any penalty deemed appropriate by law, including ejection or banning by the Delegate, or restrictions or banning by official forum administration, or both.
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Boils down to: do not break the oath of office and the government has the right to ban you if you break the law.

Seems fine to me.
 
Grosseschnauzer:
As a FYI for newer residents of TNP -- It has long been the position of many of us that a violation of the R.A. oath currently in Law 28, or of the oath of office in Law 1 (which was the first law ever enacted by a democratic TNP), are independent grounds for a criminal proceeding.

Recognizing that institutional memory can be lost as players retire from the region or from the game, I will be introducing an amendment to Law 22 to assure that this understanding remains part of TNP law.
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I thought I should include the above, so that there's no misunderstanding as to why I've introduced this proposal at this time.
 
Not sure if I have the pull to do so, but I agree with this in spades.
 
The only thing I have a slight problem with is that this adds quite a bit more text to the already voluminous legal code of the region's government, but that wouldn't change my ye to a nay.
:P
 
"Voluminous"? Compared to what?

The problem with brevity for brevity's sake is that it creates more problems than it solves, and in the end, makes things incapable of functioning at all. Which is where we were under the current system for a couple of years.
 
Grosseschnauzer:
"Voluminous"? Compared to what?
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1) Every region I've ever seen.
2)The actual amount a new nation is really going to read (by a lot).
3) The problem with legislating to every single possible occurrence that may come up at any point in the region's future, is we will necessarily miss most of the millions of possibilities for problems to come up, and also create pages of laws on situations the region will never see occur. It is frustrating to new members and completely useless. I'm a member of dozens of regions that operate perfectly well, and have for years, on far less lengthy and specific laws.

After looking around TNP for a few minutes the only thing that is clear is that it will take one weeks to even begin to understand the jungle that is our laws.

I have to say I agree with AMOM here in general, our laws are a mess.
 
There hasn't been any real further discussion of this proposal that would require changes in the language, so I think it is ready for moving this to formal discussion, and I so move.
 
No objection to formal discussion. As a new assembly member I am still trying to get up to speed on the voluminous legal code. :)

In doing so, it appears to me that there are already a whole host of prescribed consequences for violating the various oaths of office. There also seems to be a very specific criminal code covering a wide range of possible violations.

Could you explain what is gained by making violation of the oath a specific crime, in and of itself?

It would seem to me that if you catch someone breaking the law there are already plenty of grounds to proceed with criminal action without further criminalizing breaking an oath.

The oaths are basically promises to uphold the law of land - in fact, much of their text simply repeats violations that can be found elsewhere in the criminal code. So, it seems to me that this proposal boils down to making it a crime to break your promise not to commit a crime.

To use a RL example - Nixon wasn't facing impeachment primarily because he violated his oath of office, although he certainly did. It was the crimes he committed that provided the basis for impeachment proceedings.

I don't really feel strongly about it, just curious about the rationale.
 
I view this as more of a "cleaning up" amendment rather than a major change.

It has been an unwritten practice that violation of either the RA application oath or the oath of office could be the basis of a criminal proceeding. The first purpose of this proposal is to reduce that unwritten practice to writing, so that the institutional memory of this fact is not lost as long time players retire from the region or from the game.

The penalty provision, likewise reflects a unwritten practice that has applied in all criminal cases; the described penalties are maximums, and the Court may impose whatever it might view as an appropriate or fair lesser penalty to these maximums. We have rarely had an actual criminal trial reach a final judgment, so there's very little to go on as to setting a range of penalties. this new provision will leave that matter to future development by the Court or by the R.A.

I'm quite concerned about making sure generally accepted unwritten practices are put in writing because of the steady nature of retirements from the region and from the game. NS has been around for 8 years, now, and many of us have been here almost that long. (I'm almost at 6 years myself, and many of our old-timers are in their seventh or eighth year.)
 
The essence of ideas like these is, as I see it, to increase clarity with the side-effect of increasing redundancy.

As a personal preference, I loathe redundancy and find it easy to understand things, sometimes even invent implicit things that aren't necessarily actually stated. I can understand the desire to increase clarity however.
 
I'm actually not sure now that I like B:

B. If any other act is declared a prohibited or criminal act in the Constitution, Bill of Rights or Legal Code in addition to this Law, punishment for the commission of such prohibited acts may include any penalty deemed appropriate by law, including ejection or banning by the Delegate, or restrictions or banning by official forum administration, or both.
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This is the preliminary discussion thread for a bill for which there is a formal discussion thread in the other subforum. I responded to this in that thread there in connection with comments from Prgmia.
 
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