Ruling of the Court of the North Pacific
In regards to the Judicial Inquiry filed by Mall on Regional Assembly Membership
Opinion drafted by SillyString, joined by Kiwi and Blue Wolf II
The Court took into consideration the inquiry filed here by Mall.
The Court took into consideration the briefs filed by PaulWallLibertarian42, Hileville, flemingovia, and Great Bights Mum, as well as two statements from Zyvetskistaahn and one from Crushing Our Enemies in response to Court questioning.
The Court took into consideration portions of Chapter 6.1, Section 6 of the Legal Code of The North Pacific:
4. An application for Regional Assembly membership ceases to be valid if at any time the applicant's declared nation in The North Pacific nation is not located in The North Pacific.
5. Forum administration will have 14 days to evaluate Regional Assembly applicants and verify that they are not using a proxy or evading a judicially-imposed penalty.The Vice Delegate will have 3 days to perform a security assessment of the applicant. All security assessments will be performed in consultation with the Security Council, and in accordance with all laws of The North Pacific.
6. The Speaker will reject applicants who fail an evaluation by either forum administration or the Vice Delegate.
7. If an applicant is rejected for failing an evaluation by the Vice Delegate, the Regional Assembly will immediately hold a majority vote on whether to uphold the rejection.
8. The Regional Assembly may overturn a previous decision to uphold the rejection of an applicant by majority vote.
9. The Speaker will accept all other applicants with valid applications.
10. The Speaker will process applications within 14 days. If an applicant has not been accepted or rejected within that time, they will be automatically accepted to the Regional Assembly.
11. Regional Assembly members may not vote in any vote which began before they were last admitted.
12. The Speaker will maintain a publicly viewable roster of Regional Assembly members.
13. The Speaker will promptly remove any Regional Assembly members whose removal is ordered by the Court, or whose nation in The North Pacific leaves or ceases to exist.
14. The Speaker's office will promptly remove any Regional Assembly members who fail to log in to the North Pacific forum for over 30 consecutive days; or who have not voted for 20 consecutive days and have missed four consecutive Regional Assembly votes to enact, amend or repeal laws, as determined by the time they closed.
15. Regional Assembly members that have submitted a notice of absence, in accordance with any regulations set by the Speaker, shall be exempt from the provisions of the above clause for the stated duration of their absence.
The Court opines the following:
The Court has two questions under its consideration. The first, dealing with the nature of RA membership, asks when that membership is lost - is it at the exact moment a violation occurs, or is it once that violation is noticed by the Speaker's Office?
When considering this question, the Court weighed four factors. The first is the language of the section in question, which states:
13. The Speaker will promptly remove any Regional Assembly members whose removal is ordered by the Court, or whose nation in The North Pacific leaves or ceases to exist.
14. The Speaker's office will promptly remove any Regional Assembly members who fail to log in to the North Pacific forum for over 30 consecutive days; or who have not voted for 20 consecutive days and have missed four consecutive Regional Assembly votes to enact, amend or repeal laws, as determined by the time they closed.
The wording of these clauses does not definitively answer the question, but it does lean toward one side. They are blunt, assigning direct responsibility for their duties to the Speaker, and declaring that the Speaker's actions are a necessary component - and not an afterthought - of ensuring the law is followed. Because these clauses are phrased as they are, focusing on the Speaker's duties rather than simply declaring that Regional Assembly membership is lost under certain criteria, the Court finds tentative support for the latter position.
As admission and removal are two sides of the same coin, the Court also notes the wording of the RA admission clauses:
6. The Speaker will reject applicants who fail an evaluation by either forum administration or the Vice Delegate.
7. If an applicant is rejected for failing an evaluation by the Vice Delegate, the Regional Assembly will immediately hold a majority vote on whether to uphold the rejection.
8. The Regional Assembly may overturn a previous decision to uphold the rejection of an applicant by majority vote.
9. The Speaker will accept all other applicants with valid applications.
10. The Speaker will process applications within 14 days. If an applicant has not been accepted or rejected within that time, they will be automatically accepted to the Regional Assembly.
Despite the fact that the Speaker has very strict limits on when an applicant is to be denied and when they are to be accepted, under these clauses the Speaker still possesses the final duty of action. An applicant is not accepted after passing the security checks, nor rejected after failing them, until the Speaker declares that such is so. Despite the Speaker's lack of discretion in the decision, their statements on the matter are explicitly performative - in contrast with the passive change of status allowed for by 6.1.10.
Second, the Court took into consideration the existing practice of the Speaker's Office. According to the testimony of the previous two Speakers, Zyvetskistaahn and Crushing Our Enemies, as well as a former Deputy Speaker, PaulWallLibertarian42, it has been the practice of the Speaker's office for over a year and a half to follow the latter interpretation. That the Speaker's Office has, for such a significant period of time, held a consistent position on the matter lends weight to the Court's tentative reading of the Legal Code. We are loathe to interfere with that practice without considerable legal justification.
Third, the Court considered each interpretation's potential for abuse, should any individual with the inclination to do so ever take office as Speaker. As a number of briefs mentioned, there is risk in declaring that membership depends on the Speaker's Office noticing a violation. It is possible for a Speaker to use such an interpretation to immediately remove members they dislike, while quietly alerting members they prefer and allowing them to rectify the problem.
However, the opposite interpretation is similarly open for abuse. A Speaker could pretend not to notice a violation, just to keep someone in the RA. They could get away with this easily in many cases, particularly with less prominent members, whose national events are unlikely to attract public notice. This is true even if the Speaker genuinely does not notice a violation - TNPers are far more likely to notice a well-known nation CTE and resurrect than a relatively unknown, new RA member. Moreover, this interpretation opens up a much more serious possibility for abuse, and it is this: The Speaker could use prior noncompliance as a weapon to disrupt a political opponent - for example, by unveiling the fact that a candidate in an election temporarily was out of compliance with the requirements months prior, thus invalidating their candidacy without sufficient time for them to rejoin and be eligible again. Or, alternatively, the Speaker could use this as a blackmail tool, threatening to remove someone's membership at a critical juncture based on prior noncompliance unless they act a certain way.
Both of these options are open to some abuse, but the largest risk of it comes from allowing the Speaker to impose penalties on RA members for noncompliance despite them being in compliance at the time of the punishment. This gives the Speaker the inappropriate ability to determine the setting and circumstances of a member's removal from the Regional Assembly. The Bill of Rights prohibits ex post facto laws; it is in this same spirit that the removal of Regional Assembly members who are in compliance with all membership requirements is and ought to be illegal.
Finally, the Court considered what is and is not possible for the Speaker's Office, taking into account the law and the tools at their disposal. We note that the wording of 6.1.13 and 6.1.14 is identical with respect to the operative clause, and that therefore the Speaker's obligations under each must be interpreted to be identical - that is, we must rule that membership is lost at the same point under each clause.
The former interpretation runs into trouble here. Although it is possible, using NationStates tools, to determine a nation's existence and movement history, it is not possible to do the same with a member's activity history on this forum. The Speaker's office is enjoined to remove RA members who fail to log in for more than 30 days, and yet, if they do not see this occur and the member in question logs in before they do see it, there is no way for this to be discovered. Indeed, if the nation in question was not themselves aware of exactly how long they had been away, they cannot even be called to task in one's imagination for failing to acknowledge their loss of membership and resign. To rule that their membership was lost, and should be removed, is to issue an unenforceable ruling.
As for the relevant tools, the Court notes that the Speaker's Office owns a script which regularly checks each RA member's most recent activity and the location of its nation. While this script catches violations that exist at the time it is run, it cannot look back in time and see what a nation or member did earlier. This script greatly enhances the functioning of the Office, and is what allows it to carry out its duties under the law. Should the Court rule in favor of the former interpretation, this Script would become useless, and the Speaker's Office would be obligated to manually check the nation and forum account of every RA member - a tedious and time consuming task that is quite likely to go undone.
Drawing on all of the above factors, the Court rules that statements from the Speaker's Office on the state of an individual's membership in the RA are explicitly performative. That is, membership is neither gained nor lost until the Speaker's Office acknowledges that fact, with the sole exception of the two week limit on the waiting period for RA applicants.
Additionally, the Court rules that when RA members are removed from the Regional Assembly for failing to meet at least one of the requirements laid out in 6.1.13 and 6.1.14, they must be failing to meet those requirements at the time of their removal.
Second, the Court considered whether the Speaker met the requirements to act "promptly" to remove members of the RA not in compliance with the requirements.
"Promptly" is an interesting word. It is distinct from "immediately", in that it allows some time to pass between an event and its response, but it is also distinct from any particular stated time period, in that it is unspecific as to how much time is permitted.
Since the law is deliberately unspecific, the Court would grossly overstep itself to provide a specific time period within which the Speaker - or any other government official bound by a "promptly" clause (of which nine are scattered throughout all three governing documents) - must act. Additionally, there is
no time period within which a member could not come out of compliance and then back into it again before being noticed - thus, in this case, promptness has no bearing on the overarching legal question.
The Court therefore rules that whether a government official is carrying out their duties "promptly" is a matter for the Regional Assembly to judge. There are any number of options open to RA members who feel that laxness has occurred, from writing a petition to the official in question, to drafting legislation to change those clauses, to outright recall.
