Civil Trials act of 2014

PaulWallLibertarian42

PaulWallLibertarian42

TNPer
Updated Amendment Language:

Article 5. The Court

1. The Court will try all criminal and civil cases, resolve conflicts or ambiguities in the law, and review the constitutionality of laws or legality of government policies by request of an affected party.
2. Civil complaints may be submitted directly to the court for its consideration and ajudication without input or needing to be submitted to the Attorney General's office.
3. In order for the Court to make a ruling in civil matters the court will only require a preponderance of evidence in order to make a decision.
4. The Court will consist of at least three Justices, who will select a Chief Justice among themselves.
5. The Chief Justice will administer the rules of the Court. Where no rules exist, the Chief Justice may use their discretion.
6. The official opinion of the Court in any trial,including civil trials, or review will be binding on all affected parties, including Government bodies and officials.
7. Justices will be elected by the Regional Assembly by a plurality vote every four months.
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I would also like to attach two riders to this bill to amend the Criminal code and the Penal code:


Criminal Code amendment:

1.10 Contempt of Court

"Contempt of Court" is defined as: The failure to abide by the decision of the court or acting in any manner that attempts to willfully disrupt court and trial proceedings.
Contempt is prohibited by the Court and determined at its discretion.
For this section "decision" is defined as: Ruling, opinion, direction, sentencing, punishment, summary punishment made by the Court.
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Penal Code amendment:
9. Contempt of Court as determined by the Court will be punished by summary judgement and will include removal of any basic rights and/or summary ejection of the one being placed in contempt until such a time they agree to fulfill the Courts order and directions or for whatever duration the Court sees fit.
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Article 5. The Court

1. The Court will be divided into two divisions; the criminal division that will try all criminal cases, resolve conflicts or ambiguities in the law, and review the constitutionality of laws or legality of government policies by request of an affected party.
2. The Civil Division will try all civil complaints, resolve conflicts or ambiguities on issues not listed in the criminal code of The North Pacific, between two or more affected parties. The government of The North Pacific may be considered an affected party either as a plantiff or as a defendant.
3. The Criminal Court will consist of at least three Justices, who will select a Chief Justice among themselves.
3. The Chief Justice will administer the rules of the Court. Where no rules exist, the Chief Justice may use their discretion.
4. The official opinion of the Court in any trial or review will be binding on all Government bodies and officials.
5. Justices will be elected by the Regional Assembly by a plurality vote every four months.
6. The Civil Court will consist of at least three Mediators, who will select a Chief Mediator among themselves.
7. The Chief Mediator will administer the rules of the Court. Where no rules exist, the Chief Mediator may use their discretion.
8. The official opinion of the Court in any trial or review will be binding on all Government bodies and officials.
9. In order for the Civil Court to make a ruling the presiding Mediator(s) will only require a preponderance of evidence in order to make a decision.
10. Mediators will be appointed at the commencement of the elected Delegates term by the Delegate.
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The issue of Civil complaints have arisen lately. We have seen one complaint sent to the religious court, the figh, and another "civil complaint" against the delegate submitted to and dismissed by the sitting Attorney General, as TNP currently has no legislation or jurisdiction on civil complaints (hopefully this legislation rectifies that and gives citizens more recourse when they have been aggrieved).

The first round of Mediators would be appointed by the sitting Delegate in a timely fashion once this legislation passes. They (the Mediators) will gather and create their own court rules and procedures.

To submit a complaint an aggrieved person may submit theirselves or "hire" an advocate/defense counsel to submit a complaint on their behalf directly to the Chief Mediator in a prescribed place on the forum reserved for processing civil complaints.

Obviously if this passes the great admin team would need to restructure the current court forums and subfora to make room for this new division.

Civil trials were dismissed several months back, I voted Aye in support of disbanning them, not because I was against the idea of Civil Trial, but because I thought the current law as written put extra strain on the existing judical mechanism (the Justices and AGs office) to process civil complaints similar to a criminal complaint. It shouldnt be that way. Criminal complaints should have one seperate process and civil complaints another. An AG should not be involved in Civil matters (unless to represent the state) and should play no part in a complaint process, a civil complaint should be free to be submitted directly to a civil department specifically designed to handle said civil complaints.

And yes this is a counter-proposal to Romanoffia's current proposal, as much as a figh is an interesting thing, I do not feel it needs legislated and should be kept seperate of our constiution, legal code, and current court processes. Also, this position is consistent and inline with my beliefs of keeping church and state completly seperate (yes, despite the fact we have state Flemingovianism...anyway, that is not the point.)

I submit this proposal to the legislative Regional Assembly body for her members conscious consideration. Thank you.

EDIT: After posting this, I thought of something I hadnt considered. As the current Justices are elected officials they face a recall option if they slip up while in office. Making Mediators in the civil division appointed, there is no safeguard if they somehow slip up -- therefore I think a procedure should be utilized based on whatever presidence there are if a Cabinet Minister slips up. Mediators should be considered being at-will employed by the Delegate and can be replaced whenever a delegate wishes, so if a Mediator were to mess up the public could put pressure on the Delegate to recall a mediator from that position or similarly submit a petition to the Delegate and that Mediator to get them to resign. Also if we wanted to, if someone thought it would help or enhance role play the RA could conduct a straight up or down vote of acceptance of the Delegates Mediator apointees that way there is some oversight --- though also electing good Delegates who make apointments should also be seen as good oversight.
 
Cabinet Ministers are government officials and can be removed by recall. If you define mediators as government officials they too would be subject to recall.

I don't see a huge need for a separate court to deal with civil matters. We are having trouble filling three justice positions because hardly anyone wants to do it. Who would the Delegate nominate for this?
 
As to Flemingovia's inquiry - the figh is a nessicary function, but it has a role in the religious sense to handle diputes among flemingovianism followers and between TNP God and his adherants, it does not serve the function of a secular civil court.

To McMs point - gotcha on Govt officials - then yes they would be subject to recall the same as any other government official.

As to its need - while I am not so sure it is needed persay, as in the region has not sunk into chaos in the months since we have disbanned civil recourse, mainly I was mulling this idea around, and in fact been mulling it around for some months, since we originally voted to end civil trials,(and I was hoping someone more experienced in legislating might rewrite up a new civil code) I cannot speak for everyone that voted on that measure but I know when I cast my ballot it was not an indictment against the idea of civil trial but the cumbersome overburdered methodology in which civil trials were conducted by Plantiffs needing to submit civil complaints to the AGs office the same as Criminal ones, I feel the AGs as a Government Official and Regions top Prosecutor should only hear criminal complaints and not indivdual civil ones, and if we want Civil secular (I.E. not using the religious court for issues not germaine to Adherents of Flemingovianism) trials then we would need to establish a seperate civil court for these matters. Lastly, I submit this idea in an effort to enhance the ability and to have another avenue for one to get restitution outside of the constitutional criminal court or the religious figh, and maybe in an effort to enhance role play and for the region to be able to have all the frivolous cases heard the Figh and Criminal court wont or cant hear. (It would be like TNPs own TV court -( Peoples court, Divorce court, Judge Judy etc.) --)

As far as who might Mediate? Maybe folks are reluctant to sit on the criminal court..but would like to hear Civil suits and resolve conflicts between individuals rather than conflicts between indivdual and state?

I simply floated the idea out to see what intrests there are on the subject.
 
I can set your mind at rest on that one. the Fiqh is open to all, Flemingovian or not. Anyone can access the Fiqh. You do not even have to believe in my divinity.
 
When I cast my vote for the abolition of civil trials, it was definitely to get rid of civil trials altogether, not to change how they were done. Against.
 
Crushing Our Enemies:
When I cast my vote for the abolition of civil trials, it was definitely to get rid of civil trials altogether, not to change how they were done. Against.
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That is fair, CoE.

And Mr. Flemingovia thank you for your clarification on the role and operation of the Figh.
 
Crushing Our Enemies:
When I cast my vote for the abolition of civil trials, it was definitely to get rid of civil trials altogether, not to change how they were done. Against.
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What exactly was the major reason for getting rid of civil trials in the first place?
 
plembobria:
Crushing Our Enemies:
When I cast my vote for the abolition of civil trials, it was definitely to get rid of civil trials altogether, not to change how they were done. Against.
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What exactly was the major reason for getting rid of civil trials in the first place?
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They don't work. There's no way to force someone to participate, and short of applying the sort of punishments we use in criminal trials - bans and such - there's no way to actually do anything punitive. If I slander you, the court can't MAKE me apologize, or extract any money from me as damages, or even keep me from doing it again. And criminal-type punishments for civil issues seems wrong to me - if something should get someone banned or removed from the RA, it ought to be a criminal case.
 
actually, they could. all we would need to do is make punishments for civil offences legally enforceable. that is what happens in civil trials in the UK, at least.
 
8.The official opinion of the Court in any trial or review will be binding on all Government bodies and officials.
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We could make an addition at the end of this to also include indivduals... "will be binding on all individuals affected by the case as well as all Government bodies and officials."

Something to that effect.

And failure to comply with a civil ruling could subject someone to a criminal charge...make contempt of court in Civil or Criminal court a criminal charge? Perhaps..just throwing shots in the dark here.
 
Yeah, but that repetitive line already applied when civil trials existed - it just doesn't work. And I'm not really inclined to support a system where in order to actually impose civil penalties, we have to first go through a civil trial and then through a criminal one.

It makes way more sense just to amend the criminal code to cover whatever behaviors we want to prevent and have all trials as a single type.
 
flemingovia:
We have the Fiqh and divine wisdom. Why would this be needed?
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You should then support my Fiqh Act bill so that silly crap not covered by TNP law can automatically be sent to the Fiqh, You know, just to keep the regular court justices' heads from exploding.
 
SillyString:
Yeah, but that repetitive line already applied when civil trials existed - it just doesn't work. And I'm not really inclined to support a system where in order to actually impose civil penalties, we have to first go through a civil trial and then through a criminal one.

It makes way more sense just to amend the criminal code to cover whatever behaviors we want to prevent and have all trials as a single type.
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I dont think you would have to go through both. Just that if someone chose not to comply with the civil ruling they can be charged criminally for non-compliance with the civil ruling (would have to add this charge to the criminal code) but I think most people would comply with the Civil ruling to not be held in non-compliance. Yes there would be a rogue scallywag or two, and we would then charge them with non-compliance, however I think in most cases the threat of non-compliance charges would be sufficient to deter someone from thinking about not complying and they would comply as a result.

As you suggest instead of reintroducing civil trials, is there anything you or anyone else feels should be amended into the criminal code? The BOR for example guarentees freedom of expression and the government would encourage such, should we expand the criminal code to make it a criminal offense for a government official to deprive someone of their TNP civil rights, and possibly risk having redundance in our laws, or is "Gross Misconduct" a sufficient charge under the current legal code?

Do we want to have a discussion on expanding the legal code? Personally I feel the current charges such ad Gross Misconduct and Fraud and Election Fraud are sufficiently broad enough to incorporate virtually any number of scenerios, do I do not think that narrowing the scope of the criminal code is nessicary, but that is why I wanted to talk about Civil law to incorporate those few things such as a BORs violation or to handle disputes among individuals..not covered in the criminal code...as the criminal code covers moreso crimes committed against the state..and not nessicarily crimes committed..or desputes among indivdual players/nations.
 
PaulWallLibertarian42:
I dont think you would have to go through both. Just that if someone chose not to comply with the civil ruling they can be charged criminally for non-compliance with the civil ruling
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I... that's literally going through both!!!!
 
Going through both if they chose not to comply with the civil ruling. But I feel the threat of the possibility of facing a hypothetical non-compliance charge would be sufficient enough to have that person go ahead and just comply with the civil ruling. And if they didnt, then yes it would be both, but I think a non-compliance trial would not take too much of the 2nd courts time, it would most likely be a fairly simple affair..."were you Ordered to do X in s certain time frame? (Cite court ruling)...did you do it in the time allotted...guilty of non-compliance...(whatever punishment the criminal court deigned nessicary)"
 
Why would I feel threatened by a criminal trial in front of a court system that can't convict JAL? I'd just pick Mall as my lawyer and get off free and clear. :P

More seriously, though, building a system which cannot enforce itself except via uncertain appeal to another system is problematic. It's not the same as escalating up to a higher level - the second trial could fail to get a guilty verdict for any number of reasons, including incompetence, delay, legal brilliance by defense team, AG never bothering to prosecute the violation, etc. It's far less efficient than amending the legal code to include whatever behaviors we'd want to address under civil codes, and making sure the punishments are proportionate.

To answer the earlier question, yes, I think the Legal Code could stand to be lightly touched up. Just a little bit, though, not too much - how about we scrap everything except Espionage and Gross Misconduct and write it again from scratch?
 
If that was an idea the RA as a whole was interrested in, I would be on board, if the RA as a whole could collaborate on it, have a criminal code overhaul convention as it were.
 
PaulWallLibertarian42:
Going through both if they chose not to comply with the civil ruling. But I feel the threat of the possibility of facing a hypothetical non-compliance charge would be sufficient enough to have that person go ahead and just comply with the civil ruling. And if they didnt, then yes it would be both, but I think a non-compliance trial would not take too much of the 2nd courts time, it would most likely be a fairly simple affair..."were you Ordered to do X in s certain time frame? (Cite court ruling)...did you do it in the time allotted...guilty of non-compliance...(whatever punishment the criminal court deigned nessicary)"
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Glad you brought up the non-compliance issue. Under the current system, if someone simply thumbs their nose at a court decision, there is no legal or constitutional basis for the court, or anyone to do anything at all about it, since non-compliance is not a criminal offence.

Of course, the Court could attempt to add on an additional penalty for non-compliance but that would be entirely unconstitutional because you cannot find someone guilty and/or penalise them for something that isn't specifically listed in the Criminal Code. This is one of the reasons why I have always been in favour of creating a Civil Code and one of the reason I and a few others insisted that there be a Civil Code clause in the Constitution.

Be that as it may, there is a certain merit to avoiding a massive civil code with thousands of laws to cover every imaginable issue involving torts and equity (by equity, I do not me matters of remuneration since we do not have an economic system in TNP). However, there is a very specific way to deal with that matter in terms of dealing with what would otherwise be adjudicated as a matter of inter-personal offences.

They way that I and others suggested, and clearly rejected mainly because most people haven't a clue of what a Common Law/Positive Law legal system actually involve. The suggestion I have at this point is to base the definition of a civil offence along the lines of Principles of Common Law.

In fact, we already DO use principles of Common Law in the Court of TNP, despite denials of this from some who do not understand what the real definition of a Common/Positive Law system actually means and implies. To wit:

We use Precedent, which is the ultimate basis of Common Law/Anglo-Saxon Positive Law and which used in every major system of Justice, including Napoleonic Code (such as used in Louisiana).

We use Rules of Evidence in a way that is exactly identical (insofar as the context of TNP) to Common Law Principles.

We tend to accept, as precedent shows, the acceptability of principles such as Double Jeopardy, Mens Rea, Actus Reus, and other forms of traditional means of determining culpability and guilt. In fact, those exact terms (and many others) appear either in the Legal Code of TNP and in the arguments and decisions of the Court of TNP.

But our legal system, without a Civil Code governed by Principles of Law (Common/Positive) renders it impossible to prosecute clearly criminal/civil offences such as Libel. Under our current system, you can libel anyone you want with impunity and no offence has been committed regardless of the damage inflicted upon a person's reputation. You can openly accuse anyone for anything ranging from racism to anything else and get away with under any and all circumstances and no offence was committed.

Another problem of our TNP legal system is that it is too broad where it shouldn't be and too narrow where it shouldn't be - and this allows for any number of Court decisions in which a guilty or not guilty verdict can be equally applied without regard to the actual real nature of the charges. This lends credence to the belief of some that the Court can indeed be used as a political tool rather than a means of delivering justice.
 
Libel could be an OOC admin issue if taken extreme..but I guess that would have to mean OOC libel...IC libel as you say..under the current system could go unchecked..unless you could make it stick under the broad term of "fraud" perhaps.
 
Noncompliance with a criminal court can absolutely be addressed - for one thing, most punishments are punitive, not voluntary. If someone is banned, they can't simply *not* be banned because they don't feel like it. If they're removed from the RA, they can't just... be in it.

If there is a voluntary punishment they fail to comply with, it can be addressed same as civil noncompliance - charge of gross misconduct. But from what I remember of the punishments on the books, none of them can simply be willfully circumvented.
 
Ive never actually seen a "list of court punishments"..with the exception of espionage and forum crashing (I believe the punishment is spelled out in the criminal code) the others seem to be left up to Court discretion. Also, I havent explictly seen anywhere in documents what the court needs as far as burden of proof for a conviction...as CJ currently for now SS, could you enlighten me? I assume it is the RL criminal standard of Beyond Reasonable doubt?

So far my civil proposal lowers the threshold for civil complaints to Preponderance of Evidence, or laws of probability, that it is more probable than not that the offense occured, or he who brings most evidence to court likely wins..if you have 1 credible witness and I have 5...those who have more people back their story usually wins.. the probablity of 5 witnesses + the one on trial out weigh the other indivdual + their one witness.

Has anyone thought about specifically spelling out each criminal offence in the code with a minimum and maximum sentence similar to what I have seen in other regions?
 
Uh...it's called the Penal Code, and it's chapter two of the Legal Code:
1. Criminal acts may be punished by restrictions on basic rights, in a manner proportionate to the crime at the discretion of the Court unless specified in this chapter.
2. Treason will be punished by ejection and banning, and removal of any basic rights for whatever duration the Court sees fit.
3. Espionage will be punished by the suspension of speech and/or voting rights for whatever finite duration the Court sees fit.
4. Crashing, Phishing, or Spamming may be punished by ejection and banning, the removal of any and all basic rights for whatever duration the Court sees fit, and/or banning by forum administration.
5. Proxying may be punished by ejection and banning, the removal of any basic rights for whatever duration the Court sees fit, and/or banning by forum administration.
6. Adspam prohibited by the Delegate may be punished by adspam suppression and summary ejection and/or banning from the region.
7. Conspiracy will be punished by a sentence strictly less than what would be appropriate for the original crime.
8. Gross Misconduct will be punished by removal from office and the suspension of voting rights for whatever finite duration the Court sees fit.
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Now that I have had some time to regain my wits as it were. What I meant to say is.

proportionate to the crime at the discretion of the Court unless specified in this chapter.

......

whatever duration the Court sees fit.
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Punishments seem up to court discretion, depending on whos on the bench if its a harda** group of justices the punishment may be harsh..if leniant judges serve it may be well leniant.

Do we want to talk about manditory minimum sentencing per crime? Or leave it up to the whims of who is judging?

And if 2 courts are not preferable, and as SS suggested the criminal code needs tweeked slightly, should we just amend the code to include the tort law we are interested in and make our current court a hybrid criminal/civil and streamline the process? Do we want civil cases at all? The majority of people do you want civil cases?

Or maybe just admin the code to make it where the AG may bring an ambigous case that does not appear in the criminal code at their discretion to the court? And the court may choose to hear it or not at their discretion? Though perhaps that was what we already had and we got rid of it.

Does anyone share SS sentiments about tweeking the judical system, the criminal code.etc? And what suggestions do you suggest.

I am just trying to gather the pulse of the RA, its legislation I was interested in and curious if there was traction for it.
 
PaulWallLibertarian42:
Now that I have had some time to regain my wits as it were. What I meant to say is.

proportionate to the crime at the discretion of the Court unless specified in this chapter.

......

whatever duration the Court sees fit.
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Punishments seem up to court discretion, depending on whos on the bench if its a harda** group of justices the punishment may be harsh..if leniant judges serve it may be well leniant.

Do we want to talk about manditory minimum sentencing per crime? Or leave it up to the whims of who is judging?

And if 2 courts are not preferable, and as SS suggested the criminal code needs tweeked slightly, should we just amend the code to include the tort law we are interested in and make our current court a hybrid criminal/civil and streamline the process? Do we want civil cases at all? The majority of people do you want civil cases?

Or maybe just admin the code to make it where the AG may bring an ambigous case that does not appear in the criminal code at their discretion to the court? And the court may choose to hear it or not at their discretion? Though perhaps that was what we already had and we got rid of it.

Does anyone share SS sentiments about tweeking the judical system, the criminal code.etc? And what suggestions do you suggest.

I am just trying to gather the pulse of the RA, its legislation I was interested in and curious if there was traction for it.
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And this is why every penalty ever inflicted by the Court involves Bunga-Bunga.
 
I am not hearing alot of feedback to this. Or to SS's idea of tweeking the current criminal code. Should I then infer there is no support in discussing such legislation at this time? And the majority is A-Okay with how the laws are written currently?
 
I think the safer inference is that most RA members are not interested in actively legislating, but probably support improving things as long as others do the work. :P
 
SillyString:
I think the safer inference is that most RA members are not interested in actively legislating, but probably support improving things as long as others do the work. :P
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Yeah..........
 
Just a question... Why can't both Criminal and Civil cases be handled by the same team? Do you really need to bloat up the court with MORE people, and add "Mediators"? As in we really "NEED" them?
 
The reason civil trials were gotten rid of was cause the law was badly written and it bloated up the current court. A conplaint was submitted to the AG and a civil complaint was processed through the court the same as a criminal one. Theyre different things and need handled seperately. A criminal complaint is a crime against the state and a civil complaint is a dispute among indivduals which can be handled in non-binding arbitration/mediation and not a full blown criminal trial.
 
Civil claims could still be taken to the same court, but just remove the AG from the process. Potentially.

I'm not saying I would necessarily support this, but I think the argument that civil trials bloat the court would be weaker with that change in mind. I don't think you'd really need another court entirely, but then again, I'm not really convinced this is needed at all.
 
Civil trials were eliminated because there has only been 1 in the history of TNP and there is no way to enforce voluntary punishments except through criminal trials.
 
We can make penalties legally binding. We just put a clause in our laws as follows:

"Penalties imposed by the court in civil trials shall be legally binding and enforceable."
 
Court: You have lost this civil case. I rule that you must apologize to the plaintiff and avoid addressing them on the RMB for four months.

Defendant: No, I'm not going to do any of that.

Court: But you see, here in the legal code it says "penalties imposed by the court in civil trials shall be legally binding and enforceable."

Defendant: Ok, but I'm still not going to do it.
 
Waht would work would be to say "Refusal to abide by the findings of a civil trial shall constitute contempt of court"

Then you add to the criminal code penalties for contempt of court. (which, of course, I would oppose since I am nearly always contemptuous of the court)
 
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