Temporary Hearing Officers Amendment Bill

Temporary Hearing Officers Amendment Bill

1. Section 3.2 of the Codified Law of The North Pacific is amended to read as follows,

Section 3.2: Appointment of Temporary Hearing Officers
8. When there is a case before the Court; and either all Justice positions are vacant, or all Justices have a conflict of interest; and there are fewer than three Temporary Hearing Officers hearing the case; the Delegate will, with the agreement of the Speaker, promptly appoint the required number of Temporary Hearing Officers.
9. Temporary Hearing Officers must be Regional Assembly members for the duration of their service, and may not have a conflict of interest in the case or concurrently hold any other office.

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2. Clauses 12 - 19 of Chapter 3 of the Codified Law of The North Pacific are renumbered 10 - 17 respectively.

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The primary effect of this bill is that Temporary Hearing Officers (THO) are only appointed when there are no Justices available to hear a case at all. For example, if only one Justice had to recuse themselves, under the provisions of this bill the other two Justices would proceed to hear the case as usual. This is unlike the current situation, which would require that one THO would need to be appointed and join them in the case. With the proposed amendment, THOs would be appointed only if all three Justices had to recuse themselves.

There are three reasons why I believe this is a good change.

First, the appointment of THOs is typically a slow process. It often delays cases by at least a week. With the proposed change, these delays would be eliminated, as the court would be able to continue its proceedings uninterrupted by recusals or vacancies. With so many people complaining about the slow pace at which the court handles its business, any change to increase its efficiency should be welcome.

Second, and related to the above, the current system effectively discourages Justices from recusing themselves in the presence of conflicts of interest. Until it becomes absolutely necessary, Justices generally try to avoid having to excuse themselves from a case, to avoid causing the aforementioned delays and in general hinder the proceedings. This is undesirable, as Justices should abstain from cases as soon as it becomes apparent that their impartiality has been compromised.

Third, and perhaps most important, the appointment of THOs is an inherently political decision that introduces all sorts of biases to the way cases are decided. By removing the need for the majority of such appointments, we rid the system from these biases and ensure that justice is delivered in a much more uniform way.


The bill also makes a couple of secondary changes, fixing some technical deficiencies of the current legislation.

The first such deficiency is that the clauses currently in effect appear to require that THOs are appointed any time there are Justice vacancies, not just when there is a case before the court, and that these appointments last until the vacancies are filled. For example, should a Justice resign, current law requires that a THO be appointed and stay in the court until a new Justice is elected. The proposed amendment changes this so that THOs are only needed when there is a case before the court.

The second issue is that current law does not specify what happens if a THO becomes unavailable (say, they have to recuse themselves as well, or become inactive). Though it is reasonable to assume that a new THO appointment would then be made, I believe it is better to specify this explicitly. The proposed amendment does this.

What happens if only two Justices have a CoI on a case? I believe the intent of the current structure is to prevent a solitary Justice from making a ruling in a criminal case. While I know that this can technically be accomplished via indictment approval or private judicial decision to let a singular Justice determine the outcome the legal perception at present is that the Court as a whole decides guilt or innocence. Leaving it so that potentially one Justice can decide the fate of an accused nation could also led to political biases.

Perhaps the wording to stipulate that in the event of a criminal trial at least two Justices or one Justice and one THO must be active and available? Just an opinion.

I've got quibbles with the punctuation of the first clause, but on a procedural level... it appears that while a single justice would be able to decide a case, two THOs would not - so if three were appointed and one had to step away for conflict/RL reasons, that case would have to wait for another to be appointed as a replacement. Is that intended behavior?

So, I agree that there have been times when the system has slowed to a crawl due to vacancy issues. However, I believe that in criminal cases having all justice positions filled is in the best interests of justice. I could be convinced that if this situation arose during a review, having one justice might be ok, but for criminal cases I could not support this bill as written because potentially one justice could decide the case.

From my quick glance at the Bill of Rights, this legislation seems to be ok:

7. When charged with criminal acts, Nations of The North Pacific shall have a fair, impartial, and public trial before a neutral and impartial judicial officer.

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The last word is "officer" and not "officers" so it would seem that a potentiality of this bill is technically fine. I still favor a system where 3 justices decide the innocence or guilt of a defendant.

r3n, are you ready to move this to a vote?

I would like to bring back this bill. My apologies for neglecting it for the last month, a few other things emerged and I needed to redirect my time.

SillyString:

I've got quibbles with the punctuation of the first clause, but on a procedural level... it appears that while a single justice would be able to decide a case, two THOs would not - so if three were appointed and one had to step away for conflict/RL reasons, that case would have to wait for another to be appointed as a replacement. Is that intended behavior?

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[size=-5]It's your crusade against semicolons again, isn't it ;_; .[/size]

Yes, that is intentional. The main premise of the bill is that Justices, by virtue of how they are selected, can be expected to be better equipped to make impartial decisions than THOs, whose appointment is inherently a political decision. This issue with THOs is counter-balanced to an extent by requiring that there always be three of them, while for Justices the same requirement is not necessary.

Note, by the way, that replacing appointed THOs is a change we should make regardless of the rest. Should a THO after their appointment develop a conflict of interest, they should be replaced by a newly appointed THO.

Gracius Maximus:

What happens if only two Justices have a CoI on a case? I believe the intent of the current structure is to prevent a solitary Justice from making a ruling in a criminal case. While I know that this can technically be accomplished via indictment approval or private judicial decision to let a singular Justice determine the outcome the legal perception at present is that the Court as a whole decides guilt or innocence. Leaving it so that potentially one Justice can decide the fate of an accused nation could also led to political biases.

Perhaps the wording to stipulate that in the event of a criminal trial at least two Justices or one Justice and one THO must be active and available? Just an opinion.

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punk d:

So, I agree that there have been times when the system has slowed to a crawl due to vacancy issues. However, I believe that in criminal cases having all justice positions filled is in the best interests of justice. I could be convinced that if this situation arose during a review, having one justice might be ok, but for criminal cases I could not support this bill as written because potentially one justice could decide the case.

From my quick glance at the Bill of Rights, this legislation seems to be ok:

7. When charged with criminal acts, Nations of The North Pacific shall have a fair, impartial, and public trial before a neutral and impartial judicial officer.

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The last word is "officer" and not "officers" so it would seem that a potentiality of this bill is technically fine. I still favor a system where 3 justices decide the innocence or guilt of a defendant.

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I do believe that having all cases heard by three Justices is ideal. This is why I have stated several times recently that Justices should show some restraint in their involved in the public affairs of the region, so that circumstances where they need to recuse themselves arise rarely.

When a situation where a Justice must recuse themselves does arise, there are two alternatives. One is to let the remaining Justices hear the case, which is what I am proposing. The other is to appoint THOs to supplement for the recused Justices, which is what I have.

My argument is simple. The appointment of THOs is done by only one or two people, at their absolute discretion, and concurrently with the events the THOs will be asked to judge. It is inherently a political decision, that is influenced by the circumstances of the case before the court, and by the opinion of the few people that make the appointment with regards to that case. Therefore, this appointment introduces an even worse bias than having fewer than three Justices hear the case does.

This is true both for reviews and criminal cases, and for all kinds of cases really. So, I would be against making special exception for criminal cases.

I will post a reminder for any further comments on this bill before I move it to formal debate, as it had been inactive for a month.

Any bill that allows for one justice to decide the fate of a defendant won't have my support.

I continue to fight for the soul of The North Pacific that I know and love. I know our judicial system has not been the best, but I believe that we must continue to support a system that requires three impartial people (well 2, for a majority decision) to decide the criminal guilt of one of our members.

I will be voting Nay on this bill.

My main concern is that it seems like a lot of power for one person, especially given that the decision cannot be appealed. We have also had some interesting justices and I am not sure what they would have done if they were the only Justice presiding over a case.

Justice FALCONKATS comes to mind. There is some merit in involving the other two THO's in the case as a balancing act and to provide further input into the decision itself.

I have to agree with the assessment of Punk D and McMasterdonia. A single Justice should not be the final arbiter in a trial. I cannot support this bill as currently written.

On this particular point I agree with r3n, I think it's still fine for the accused to have a verdict from a single justice if the other two are recused.

I just don't think it makes a lot of difference and I think we have to give our elected justices enough credit to decide the verdict. It doesn't necessarily need two THOs.

I've changed my mind on this bill. As the appointments would be up to the individual justice that is remaining, and these appointments are not subject to the same level of accountability as the other justices are, I will support this amendment.

As we elect our justices we should be able to trust them tor each a fair and impartial verdict. If they do not, we have the option of recall and the ability to not support their reelection to that position, or hold it against them for any other position if we so desire. We will need to be more careful about who we elect, and be prepared to exercise our right to accountability if we are required to do so.

punk d:

I continue to fight for the soul of The North Pacific that I know and love. I know our judicial system has not been the best, but I believe that we must continue to support a system that requires three impartial people (well 2, for a majority decision) to decide the criminal guilt of one of our members.

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What you continue to do is completely ignore my argument, and just repeat the same thing.

Let me quote your post. You say "three impartial people". When we have one Justice and two THOs hear a case, we have indeed three people. Do we have three impartial people though? That is exactly the issue at hand.

My argument is that, in good likelihood, the two THOs will not be impartial. This is a consequence of their appointment procedure. We have a single person make arbitrary appointments, without any control. The appointments themselves can be tailored to the specific circumstances of the case the THOs are appointed to hear. This means that it is very likely that the appointments will be anything but impartial. And, if the appointees are indeed biased, there is nothing we can do about this.

So then, the real dilemma becomes: whom to we want to have decide the criminal guilt of one of our members, a single impartial person, or three people two of whom are biased?

I prefer the former, as it has the largest likelihood among the two possibilities of guaranteeing a fair trial.

Ash:

I have to agree with the assessment of Punk D and McMasterdonia. A single Justice should not be the final arbiter in a trial. I cannot support this bill as currently written.

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I refer you to the above, where I addressed the same issue.

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I am also glad to see that mcmasterdonia is now in support of this bill. Let me reiterate some of his points.

People concerned about a single "bad", so to say, Justice deciding a case should remember that it is this same Justice that will appoint the two THOs joining him. Such a Justice can appoint anyone they wish, arbitrarily, without any control. A bad Justice will very likely make bad appointments. As a result, the two THOs in this case will not alleviate the situation. To the contrary, very likely they will exacerbate it.

If people are concerned about bad Justices deciding on occasion a case on their own, they should show more care not to elect these bad Justices in the first place. This is the proper remedy for this problem. Empowering these bad Justices to appoint two more people to join them in making an unfair decision is not a solution.

r3naissanc3r:

People concerned about a single "bad", so to say, Justice deciding a case should remember that it is this same Justice that will appoint the two THOs joining him. Such a Justice can appoint anyone they wish, arbitrarily, without any control. A bad Justice will very likely make bad appointments. As a result, the two THOs in this case will not alleviate the situation. To the contrary, very likely they will exacerbate it.

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I'm not so sure that this necessarily follows. One can certainly be a justice who makes poor legal decisions - and therefore untrustworthy in solitude - while still able to recognize legal talent in others and still attempting to maintain the impartiality of a proceeding.

That's not to say I'm necessarily against this, but I'm also not sure TNP has a strong enough history of electing only judges who would do fine alone to merit, well, leaving them alone.

So then, the real dilemma becomes: whom to we want to have decide the criminal guilt of one of our members, a single impartial person, or three people two of whom are biased?

I prefer the former, as it has the largest likelihood among the two possibilities of guaranteeing a fair trial.

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This is false. Not your preference but that the largest likelihood of a fair trial is one justice. One justice has a bias and it is much more likely that if you include 2 additional justices they will not all have the same bias. Thus, from a probability standpoint have 3 is better than 1. Having 5 is better than 3 and so on. The more people you have the more likely their biases cancel each other out leading to a more fair trial. This isn't my 'preference' it's simple statistics.

The appointment of the THOs must be, iirc, made by the delegate today and agreed to by the Speaker. they also must not have a CoI in the case. How you get from this to believing one justice is more likely to be impartial is beyond me. You didn't provide details on this and in fact, argue against yourself by saying that the delegate's appointment is a biased act. If a single person making an appointment is biased how much more is one person deciding the fate of an RA member?

Your logic doesn't jive. What does make sense is that you prefer a single justice. Fine. But your preference isn't the more fair option.

As for bad justices, that's your concern. I do not believe others have raise that point. My point is to create a situation where it is least likely that bias decisions will be made. The more justices leads to this, again, using statistics. You can't argue that 1 justice will lead to a more fair situation. It's mathematically impossible.

But I can argue that 3 justices are much more likely to come to a less biased decision because the delegate's appointments must be affirmed by a speaker who is not beholden to the delegate AND the THOs themselves must not have a CoI.

Refute that.

Just a minor correction, punk - the Delegate and Speaker only appoint THOs if all justices have recused themselves (a situation where r3n's bill would maintain their necessity).

If two justices have done so, the appointments are made by the one remaining one - and I believe that is where r3n's point would come into play. If a judge is unabashedly biased, one cannot presume they would seek to counter that bias in THO appointments.

As happens sometimes with reasoned debate, the points raised by r3n and Silly have made me reevaluate my position. McMasterdonia's point about recalls is also noted. Therefore, when this legislation comes to a vote you can count on an Aye from me.

I agree that having one justice appoint THOs is problematic. An alternate solution would be to change how THOs are appointed. Either the Delegate could always appoint them (although this would require a back up for the case that the delegate has a clear conflict, such as being the defendant). Another option would be to require THOs are confirmed by the RA, although this could prove to be a significant delay.

I'd like for someone to provide an instance where a biased justice appointed 2 other likeminded biased justices.

I think we need to distinguish between active and passive bias. By actively biased I mean judges who go into a case wanting a certain outcome and care about that outcome more than the law. By passively biased I mean judges who come to the table with certain preconceptions, but are not actively pursuing a certain outcome (I would argue all judges are passively biased).

If we have a scenario where we're down to one Justice, the defendant is screwed either way if the Justice is actively biased. Under current law, the Justice can appoint to THOs who are equally biased. Under the current proposal, the judge can make a biased ruling all on his/her own. I see any reason to believe that one system makes bias more or less likely than the other.

There is more of a distinction for judges that are passively biased. The judge will rule a certain way because of their passive bias, but will appoint THOs who they believe will be good judges, rather than because of how they expect them to rule. The passive bias is likely to bleed a little into the THO appointments (we all tend to favor people who share our passive biases), but in this instance, the current system at least gets three people on the bench, which does statistically aid with passive bias.

I don't think either the current law or the proposal addresses the issues particularly well. I think a system for selecting THOs that is more accountable and outside of the control of the Court would be preferable. The trade off. of course, is that this would inevitably lead to it taking longer to get trials started if THOs are needed.

punk d:

I'd like for someone to provide an instance where a biased justice appointed 2 other likeminded biased justices.

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I didn't think we had actual precedence for this.

No matter - I might be changing my mind on this one. Not based on the arguments in this thread, those do not convince me. What has turned my opinion is expediency. I have major concerns about impartial justices (as noted above) and believe 3 quasi-impartial justices is better than 2 or 1 quasi-impartial justice. However, I think our court system has lost credibility because it has not been expedient. Cases drag on forever and we get lost in process prison. My opinion now is that I'd rather one quasi-impartial justice that can "keep the chains moving", as it were, than the perpetual search for 3 justices to hear a case. It's definitely a trade-off, but I believe I'm willing to make that trade. I need to re-review this proposed legislation in that light to see if it fits within this paradigm.

Further - I have had another thought, judicial certifications. What I mean by this is a legal 'class' that one has to pass in order to run for office for any of the judicial offices (includes AG). That's for another topic.

Really, what I would like to see is an increase in the number of elected justices, still with only three assigned to any given case (according to the court rules administered by the CJ). That way, if a justice resigns or is unavailable for whatever reason or has a conflict of interest, we have elected justices that can step in and take their place on the bench for that case.

Crushing Our Enemies:

Really, what I would like to see is an increase in the number of elected justices, still with only three assigned to any given case (according to the court rules administered by the CJ). That way, if a justice resigns or is unavailable for whatever reason or has a conflict of interest, we have elected justices that can step in and take their place on the bench for that case.

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We have enough trouble finding three adequate people at an election to be Justice, I can't imagine what it'd be like if we upped that number.

It's better than finding THOs.

EDIT: And three elected justices are better than 2 or 1, as well.

But this legislation would mean we wouldn't have to find THOs.

See my edit.

Three may be better quantitatively, sure, but not necessarily qualitatively.

If that's what you think then propose a bill to *reduce* the number of justices...

That would have to be a constitutional amendment, and I don't particularly *want* to reduce the number. I just don't want to increase the number either.

I don't honestly think we need more than 3 elected Justices. Though I understand the point that COE is making about it being better than THO's or just one or two justices in theory. I think we would also see a lower quality of elected justices if we elected more than 3. Otherwise it could limit who would run or be eligible to serve in other government positions in the executive/legislature.

This bill had some support from those who posted. Is it passable?

A point that concerns me is that it removes the clause saying who is making the THO appointments if the delegate and speaker both have a COI. That clause specified they would be treated as absent. In practice that means their deputies and order of succession would make the appointments.

So, if you can clarify how it works in that situation with that part removed, I may still support this bill.

Thank you for giving this thread your attention once more.

From what I understand, it is r3n's intention to no longer pursue this bill.

mcmasterdonia:

I've changed my mind on this bill. As the appointments would be up to the individual justice that is remaining, and these appointments are not subject to the same level of accountability as the other justices are, I will support this amendment.

As we elect our justices we should be able to trust them tor each a fair and impartial verdict. If they do not, we have the option of recall and the ability to not support their reelection to that position, or hold it against them for any other position if we so desire. We will need to be more careful about who we elect, and be prepared to exercise our right to accountability if we are required to do so.

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I understand that we should be electing justices that we can trust to make the right decision, but sometimes people make mistakes, or the person we thought we could trust changes.
I know we have the option to recall and not support them in the next election but that's after the damage has been done, it would be best to prevent these kind of situations rather than relying on the fact that we can replace the problem afterwards.

Parmistine:

mcmasterdonia:

I've changed my mind on this bill. As the appointments would be up to the individual justice that is remaining, and these appointments are not subject to the same level of accountability as the other justices are, I will support this amendment.

As we elect our justices we should be able to trust them tor each a fair and impartial verdict. If they do not, we have the option of recall and the ability to not support their reelection to that position, or hold it against them for any other position if we so desire. We will need to be more careful about who we elect, and be prepared to exercise our right to accountability if we are required to do so.

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I understand that we should be electing justices that we can trust to make the right decision, but sometimes people make mistakes, or the person we thought we could trust changes.
I know we have the option to recall and not support them in the next election but that's after the damage has been done, it would be best to prevent these kind of situations rather than relying on the fact that we can replace the problem afterwards.

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This region elects Justices that campaign on ignoring the Law.

Saying THOs are political appointments and elected Justices are not is asinine.

I am withdrawing the part of this bill effecting the primary change this bill sought to bring, related to cases being heard by fewer than 3 judges.

However, I am not withdrawing the bill altogether. As I said in my first post, the bill also makes some secondary technical changes:

The bill also makes a couple of secondary changes, fixing some technical deficiencies of the current legislation.

The first such deficiency is that the clauses currently in effect appear to require that THOs are appointed any time there are Justice vacancies, not just when there is a case before the court, and that these appointments last until the vacancies are filled. For example, should a Justice resign, current law requires that a THO be appointed and stay in the court until a new Justice is elected. The proposed amendment changes this so that THOs are only needed when there is a case before the court.

The second issue is that current law does not specify what happens if a THO becomes unavailable (say, they have to recuse themselves as well, or become inactive). Though it is reasonable to assume that a new THO appointment would then be made, I believe it is better to specify this explicitly. The proposed amendment does this.

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I believe these two issues still merit correction. The following amended version of the bill limits its scope to just these changes (as well as reflect changes to numbering necessitated by other lwas recently enacted). I think these changes are straightforward, but if anyone sees any issues or has suggestions for improved wording, please comment.

Temporary Hearing Officers Amendment Bill

1. Section 3.1 of the Codified Law of The North Pacific is amended to read as follows,

Section 3.1: Appointment of Temporary Hearing Officers
2. When there is a case before the Court; and the total number of Justices without a conflict of interest in office and Temporary Hearing Officers appointed for this case is less than three, the remaining Justices will appoint the required number of Temporary Hearing Officers to reach that number. If there are no such Justices, these appointments will be made by the Delegate with the agreement of the Speaker.
3. Temporary Hearing Officers must be Regional Assembly members for the duration of their service, and may not have a conflict of interest in the case or concurrently hold any other office. Appointed Temporary Hearning Officers

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2. Clauses 6 - 13 of Chapter 3 of the Codified Law of The North Pacific are renumbered 4 - 11 respectively.

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EDIT: In addition to the above, there is one more change, that THOs are now required to be in the RA.

I can support this revision.

I think the proposed section 3.1 clause 3 needs to be reworded.

Secondly, what happens if the justices and the delegate and the speaker all have a conflict of interest? Under the old law an 'acting speaker' and an 'acting delegate' would make the appointment instead of the speaker and the delegate.

Chasmanthe:

I think the proposed section 3.1 clause 3 needs to be reworded.

Secondly, what happens if the justices and the delegate and the speaker all have a conflict of interest? Under the old law an 'acting speaker' and an 'acting delegate' would make the appointment instead of the speaker and the delegate.

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Chas, I believe you are referring to this clause from the current wording:

4. In implementing the previous clause, any person who has a conflict of interest will be treated as absent.

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That is, that this clause would currently cause a Speaker or Delegate with a conflict of interest to be treated as "absent", and therefore require their "acting" replacement (whoever that is under current law) to step in for the purposes of the THO appointment.

I think you are correct. I removed that clause in my proposed amendment as I thought it no longer served a purpose, given the new 3.1.2. But I did not consider the case you mentioned. I think the following revised version of the bill addresses this:

Temporary Hearing Officers Amendment Bill

1. Section 3.1 of the Codified Law of The North Pacific is amended to read as follows,

Section 3.1: Appointment of Temporary Hearing Officers
2. When there is a case before the Court; and the total number of Justices and Temporary Hearing Officers assigned to this case is less than three, the remaining present Justices will appoint the required number of Temporary Hearing Officers to reach that number. If there are no such Justices, these appointments will be made by the Delegate with the agreement of the Speaker.
3. In implementing the previous clause, if an officeholder has a conflict of interest in the case at hand, the respective office will be treated as vacant.
4. Temporary Hearing Officers must be Regional Assembly members for the duration of their service, and may not concurrently hold any other office.

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Basically, the bill makes everyone who has a conflict of interest being considered as having vacated their office, meaning that their office will be filled for the purposes of that clause as predicted by law (if it's a vacated Justice or THO office, by another THO appointment; if it's the Delegate or Speaker, by their "Acting" replacements).

If there are no further comments, I move we vote.

"3. In implementing the previous clause, if an officeholder has a conflict of interest in the case at hand, the respective office will be treated as vacant."

I have a problem with this. For how long is the office considered vacant? I ask because when the Vice Delegate is acting Delegate he vacates his office temporarily too. It seems a little over the top for the offices of Delegate and Vice Delegate to be legally considered vacant just to appoint a THO.