Unibot for Associate Justice

unibot

unibot

TNPer
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UNIBOT, A CANDIDATE FOR ASSOCIATE JUSTICE
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As Associate Justice, I would look to continue Chief Justice Hileville's Court's excellent work, in an Associate Justice role, balancing precedent with wise and just interpretation of the law. I certainly see Chief Justice Hileville and his Court as an example of how to interpret The North Pacific law in a contemporary setting. For example, in The Ruling of the Court of the North Pacific, In regards to the Judicial Inquiry filed by Unibot on Clause 9 of the Bill of Rights, we see a strong opinion, that carefully reflected on the Ruling on Residency and Forum Administration and ultimately rejected a controversial portion of the ruling by Chief Justice Grosseschnauzer. We need a Court that will carefully consider, but not necessarily object to overturning decisions -- sometimes, courts do just get the decision wrong.

Likewise I also applaud the Court's decision in Ruling of the Court of the North Pacific, In regards to the Judicial Inquiry filed by Abbey on the Jurisdiction of the Court , what we have here is the Court acknowledging the scope of the Court and recognizing when the legislature is a more appropriate forum for decision-making. Unfortunately, as the Court is often used as a way to circumvent the Regional Assembly, bearing in mind the counter-majoritarian difficulty, we need a Court that will defend the law and only the law -- we cannot let the law extend beyond its reaches when parliamentary review is a more appropriate forum for decision-making.

Do I have experience with the law? I have been involved with The North Pacific since January, 2010, I am very familiar with The North Pacific law and I have experience in both procedural and criminal law cases, serving for three terms as Minister of Justice in The South Pacific. Before gameplay, I developed skills of legal interpretation in the World Assembly, where I was a successful legislator. Although, some may think of me as a impetuous personality, I take the law quite seriously and have taken on a more solemn, emotionally withdrawn and impersonal personality when interpreting and defending the law during my role previous as Minister of Justice. I have had to rule against friends, I have had to give the benefit under the law to people I dislike; my experience with interpreting the law is that it is a duty which requires of you to be impersonal and to be above pettiness.

I hope that The North Pacific positively considers me for Associate Justice; I look forward to standing behind the principles of Jurisprudence, Justice and Liberty. I will serve faithfully, independently and actively.

Yours for your consideration,
Unibot.
 
Some recent controversies have led many to the conclusion that you are, to be blunt, a political animal. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing. When I look for a judge, though, I want someone who can ignore the temptation to legislate from the bench. Can you give us an example of a decision you have made which was contrary to your political interests?
 
Sure.

I did not appeal The South Pacific v. Sedgistan, after being convinced by the former Minister of Justice that was the proper reading of the law. This meant a political enemy of mine (who had arranged my impeachment in the FRA) could not be charged for treason, for having couped the region only a few months before my appointment.

I ruled that Haxstree's citizenship had been recognized retroactively, although his citizenship had been invalid in reality for some time; this was a flexible offer I made to Haxstree and Hilevile out of fairness, even though Haxstree was an enemy of mine in the legislature we went back and forth all the time.

I ruled that a government run by Hileville (A UDLer at the time) was in violation of L-#2 Election Law Section 9. I then allowed him to maintain a government adviser who was Haxstree's accompliance in the legislature and another enemy of mine, Ant in the Foriegn Affairs department even though he had been barred from serving in government positions for one year (we ruled the adviser position was a civil duty taken up by Ant).

On Mar 14 2012, I recused myself in the case of The South Pacific v, Antariel, arguing that the Ministry of Justice would lack legitimacy if the head of the UDL ruled against someone for having been "White Lance", a conspirator with Balder's rogue delegate and a notable critic of the UDL.

In a different case against Antariel, where he was supposedly working with Frak beyond his government mandate of spying; I ruled there was not enough information to prosecute him, even though he was a huge critic of the UDL in TNP and, once again, we went back and forth in the legislature.

These are just some rulings I made I can think of, during my terms, the big topic was obviously Frak and Ant. Eventually Frak was found guilty of treason, but for most of my terms, the prosecution movement didn't have enough evidence to even merit a trial, which I had to continually insist which frustrated a lot of my political colleagues at the time.
 
This is a question I have for all justices - do you commit to fulfilling your term no matter what in-game situations arise?

RL is always a different matter, but from an in-game perspective will you fulfill your obligations should you be elected?

A more specific question to you Unibot - What would you say your judicial style is? I know GBM asked a related question, but I am wondering if you feel it is within the purview of justices to try to interpret the intention of legal text or to take the text as it is written, literally. If you could provide some insight on that, that would be appreciated. If you could provide a TNP law text example, that would be awesome!
 
This is a question I have for all justices - do you commit to fulfilling your term no matter what in-game situations arise?
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm online most of the day, I'm a student and have a lot of free time.

What would you say your judicial style is? I know GBM asked a related question, but I am wondering if you feel it is within the purview of justices to try to interpret the intention of legal text or to take the text as it is written, literally.
Click to expand...

A dahm good question. I suppose my style would be fairly literal; I don't want to apply anything to texts that aren't necessarily written in the text because it's the job of the Regional Assembly to assert those principles through law. An example would be when I ruled against the idea in TSP that the RA could assert its power over foreign policy when it contradicted the MoFA's policies -- it was argued this threatened parliamentary supremacy, I agreed, but also made it clear that the Constitution did not as written give Parliament that Principle of Supremacy. I did however take the opportunity to write a quick amendment to the TSP Constitution to correct this error, but I do not want to assume principles that are not asserted in the Constitution. This would go for The North Pacific as well.

The spirit of the law only comes into play when the intent is so clear that it would be perversely unreasonable to rule otherwise; although, The North Pacific law is often overly complex, it's fairly obvious when someone is trying to stretch the law beyond its reasonable parameters. I am not a fan of historical interpretation like some American supreme court justices have done, history is complex and not an exact science; additionally history and the "intent" of our constitutional founders is not progulmated. Law must be progulmated for it to be legitimate. There is no legitimacy in our justice system, if people are convicted for following the word of the law instead of the words of our founders outside of the law. We do not expect our citizens to be historians.

And an example of interpretation,

I would argue that,

Bill of Rights:
1. All Nations of The North Pacific are sovereign. [..]
Click to expand...

Applies to all Nations in The North Pacific and that "of" does not necessarily assume any sort of citizenry. Furthermore, the word is "Nation", not Citizen -- this is a deliberate choice. Here I do not want to apply assumptions that "add" to the law, suggesting "of" has some greater meaning than it normally would adds components of philosophy I do not wish to assume. Likewise, if in doubt, The Bill of Rights is to protect people from the Government, it is safer thus as a Justice to give the benefit of any ambiguity to the person affected -- I would invite the RA to resolve these ambiguities if they arose.

Thanks for the questions, I hope this answers them.

Yours,
Unibot.
 
Thank you for your answer, Unibot. i'm glad to hear that you will take a more literal interpretation.

I'll ask another question, what do you think about the recent ruling request about the Speaker's invalidating votes when RA members add "commentary" with their votes? If you were a justice right now, how would you rule and what would you use as your basis for ruling?
 
So would it help if our constitutional founders promulgated?
Click to expand...

Law is promulgated, so we know we must follow it, word for word.

The vague intentions of the law besides what can be read is not promulgated, so how is it legitimate for us to expect citizens to follow that.

I'll ask another question, what do you think about the recent ruling request about the Speaker's invalidating votes when RA members add "commentary" with their votes? If you were a justice right now, how would you rule and what would you use as your basis for ruling?
Click to expand...

It depends on the extent of policy; a policy that appears inconsistent and going after punctuation to remove votes would violate one's right to enfranchisement in our legislature, arguably. Bearing in mind the only other example I can think of a regime punishing grammar is Francos Spain's Civil Code.

But requiring commentary to be in a discussion thread would not violate a Right to Freedom of Speech so long as that discussion thread is highly accessible for RAers. Obviously having the discussion be through PMs to a legislature account or something would be a farce and illegal.
 
unibot:
This is a question I have for all justices - do you commit to fulfilling your term no matter what in-game situations arise?
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm online most of the day, I'm a student and have a lot of free time.

What would you say your judicial style is? I know GBM asked a related question, but I am wondering if you feel it is within the purview of justices to try to interpret the intention of legal text or to take the text as it is written, literally.
Click to expand...

A dahm good question. I suppose my style would be fairly literal; I don't want to apply anything to texts that aren't necessarily written in the text because it's the job of the Regional Assembly to assert those principles through law. An example would be when I ruled against the idea in TSP that the RA could assert its power over foreign policy when it contradicted the MoFA's policies -- it was argued this threatened parliamentary supremacy, I agreed, but also made it clear that the Constitution did not as written give Parliament that Principle of Supremacy. I did however take the opportunity to write a quick amendment to the TSP Constitution to correct this error, but I do not want to assume principles that are not asserted in the Constitution. This would go for The North Pacific as well.

The spirit of the law only comes into play when the intent is so clear that it would be perversely unreasonable to rule otherwise; although, The North Pacific law is often overly complex, it's fairly obvious when someone is trying to stretch the law beyond its reasonable parameters. I am not a fan of historical interpretation like some American supreme court justices have done, history is complex and not an exact science; additionally history and the "intent" of our constitutional founders is not progulmated. Law must be progulmated for it to be legitimate. There is no legitimacy in our justice system, if people are convicted for following the word of the law instead of the words of our founders outside of the law. We do not expect our citizens to be historians.

And an example of interpretation,

I would argue that,

Bill of Rights:
1. All Nations of The North Pacific are sovereign. [..]
Click to expand...

Applies to all Nations in The North Pacific and that "of" does not necessarily assume any sort of citizenry. Furthermore, the word is "Nation", not Citizen -- this is a deliberate choice. Here I do not want to apply assumptions that "add" to the law, suggesting "of" has some greater meaning than it normally would adds components of philosophy I do not wish to assume. Likewise, if in doubt, The Bill of Rights is to protect people from the Government, it is safer thus as a Justice to give the benefit of any ambiguity to the person affected -- I would invite the RA to resolve these ambiguities if they arose.

Thanks for the questions, I hope this answers them.

Yours,
Unibot.
Click to expand...
You seem to be implying 1) History is not important 2) The many nations of The North Pacific region who we don't consider citizens are important.

The ramifications of these ideas are rolling over and over in my head.

Other than that you've got a good platform. I should really make one!
 
Just some advice for the lovely candidate; I got some feedback a while ago that among other things, using words that my constituents don't have to Google for the meaning of is enticing. While using the vocabulary you do certainly confirms your intelligence, it's a turn-off for me and others, especially when someone has to literally post in your thread to ask the definition of a word. Make sense? Just some advice.
 
Chasmanthe:
You seem to be implying 1) History is not important 2) The many nations of The North Pacific region who we don't consider citizens are important.
Click to expand...
History is important, I love The North Pacific's history and I agree that the many nations in The North Pacific region who we don't consider citizens still deserve the rights under the Bill of Rights -- that's the clearest interpretation of the Bill of Rights that I can see, I wouldn't try to add other principles into the law that the law doesn't say to include.
 
Iro:
Just some advice for the lovely candidate; I got some feedback a while ago that among other things, using words that my constituents don't have to Google for the meaning of is enticing. While using the vocabulary you do certainly confirms your intelligence, it's a turn-off for me and others, especially when someone has to literally post in your thread to ask the definition of a word. Make sense? Just some advice.
Click to expand...
Sure, its just a complicated idea I was trying to express; promulgation is essentially the publicity of law as it comes into force that gives it its legitimacy, so that others can't claim ignorance of the law.
 
unibot:
Iro:
Just some advice for the lovely candidate; I got some feedback a while ago that among other things, using words that my constituents don't have to Google for the meaning of is enticing. While using the vocabulary you do certainly confirms your intelligence, it's a turn-off for me and others, especially when someone has to literally post in your thread to ask the definition of a word. Make sense? Just some advice.
Click to expand...
Sure, its just a complicated idea I was trying to express; promulgation is essentially the publicity of law as it comes into force that gives it its legitimacy, so that others can't claim ignorance of the law.
Click to expand...
Oddly enough, Iro - while reading a particular post that was then lauded for its use of words you don't have to google, I have the opposite thought. It was a turn off for me. I like folks who have command of the English language and can speak professionally. Too much informality in these roles would be a turn off for me.

But, to each his own. I believe people are familiar enough with Unibot's typical vernacular to not be bothered or charmed by it.

I for one, love to have to google words, learning is cool.

/off-topic mutterings
 
No, I get that. Perhaps it's different, though, since as the Attorney General should be able to convince through speech, while all a Justice is required to say is yes or no :P

That said, I'm a grammar obsessive and I respect your large vocabulary, Unibot.
 
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