Grosseschnauzer:
I still believe that until the Court had tested a court rule on the subject and see how it works, even an amendment to the Legal Code is premature.
And I still believe the Court will do nothing to address this issue. And that's just the first problem.
The second problem is that there is no means by which the Court can maintain order in the face of acts of Contempt without the imposing Justice, or the Court as a whole, can be exempt from being mob-lynched for imposing even a reasonable amount of order in the court in the face of acts of Contempt.
The third problem is that without an actual law, the authority of the Court to impose sanctions for Contempt will always be challenged, and probably via recall and other forms of public lynchings.
The fourth problem is that the authority of the Court or the CJ to create rules on the fly, even when a CJ has the authority to do so where no specific rules exist involving Contempt (or other matters for that issue) will always be challenged, resulting in a recall or mob-lynching.
The fifth problem with your contention is that passing Contempt Legislation is in all reality a means to exert 'checks and balances' between the branches of government by extending in Law form a very specific tool for the Court to use to enforce order in legal proceedings (or should the RA or Executive Branch refuse to comply with a legal decision of the Court).
I have no faith in the Court's desire to deal with this matter and therefore no faith in the ability of the Court to maintain order as a matter of functionality of the Court.
Such a Contempt law is actually doing a really big favour for the Court - and it is up to the Court as to whether or not to enforce sanctions for Contempt - in which situation, the Court will be at absolute fault in any matters of order they voluntarily choose not to remedy (in which case a recall or public mob-lynching would be justified).
Finally, if the Court refuses to maintain order in the Court, and the Court in fact has a specific Law to use as tool to accomplish that end, then the Court gets blamed as a whole for not using a specific tool handed to them on a silver platter.
Chasmanthe:
I can see Grosse's point about implenting this within the Court Rules instead of the legal code, but I'm not sure that would be right, because I think what we need is analagous to English Law, somebody in contempt can have sanctions imposed by the judge, without any additional trial, they can be sentenced in the court. In TNP, that could mean a sentence for contempt being delivered in the same trial thread that they were behaving contemptuously.
If you're not familiar with the concept, I would illustrate it by saying you can go into a trial not accused of anything, merely making a case, and suddenly receive a punishment such as a ban on yourself. Your rights are affected to protect the integrity of the court. That can be worth it, even if the one in contempt does not see it that way.
I don't mind if we introduce contempt or not, whatever people want, but if you want to facilitate the court keeping order then Roman's bill is a good shot at doing that, and you should consider it. On the other hand, if you believe the court can effectively impose such sanctions just by modifying the rules of its own body, then that serves the same purpose.
I agree, with the exception of the last sentence - I tried to create and apply a rule to deal with Contempt, on the fly as previous CJs have done, and look what happened. Ergo, no matter what the Court Rules say, there will always be blood if the Court ever attempts enforce even a modicum of order on unruly participants who with endlessly gripe about their rights being violated.
Hence, there is a need to carve in legal stone the Court's ability to deal with Contempt issues, whether the Court wants to deal with it or not - specifically for the benefit of future sets of Justices who may actually want to maintain order and due process.
All said and done, the reason I asked for an extension of the formal debate was due to the fact that, 1.) I changed the language of the bill and that a re-set of formal debate is required so that if needs be, we can get a better law as a results, and; 2.) to give the Court more time to attend to something I believe they have absolutely no intent of dealing with at all.
To use Chasmanthe's excellent example and reference to English Law (or any common law system that 99% of us are familiar with) and to extend it to its logical conclusion, Contempt is not a matter of Procedure, it is a matter of Criminal intent - and that criminal intent is to defuse and disrupt Due Process which is guaranteed by TNP Constitution and the BOR is, in fact, a criminal act.
Unless we defuse the matter of Contempt by creating a specific law dealing with it, Contempt will always be a successful tactic to derail trials one way or another regardless of all the Court Rules you can create (since the Court can technically only create procedural rules, but some may contend otherwise. A creative argument can wipe out any Court Rule, which is why a Contempt law is necessary and good).
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