[Private]Welcome to the winter term!

D

Democratic Donkeys

TNPer
Hello to Kialga and Grosseschnauzer, the two new Justices recently elected to serve the people.

I wanted to start this thread to put forward a few housekeeping issues that we should address to start. At the moment I feel we are in pretty good shape as a Court, and are ready to conduct our business in a professional and consistent manner to help bolster the reputation of this body.

Housekeeping:

Chief Justice
We need to elect a Chief Justice from amongst the three of us. I would like to respectfully put forward my name for consideration, as I feel it would be benefiicial to maintain continuity and direction of the Court. It is a majority vote, so I would only require one vote for myself to become Chief Justice (the other being cast by me).

Deputies?
Deputies have been up for discussion of late and it got me thinking of why we don't have any positions available within our branch. That is something I would like to see change so we can offer a stepping stone for newer players to gain invaluable experience and insight of the Court. My idea would be creating a position titled "Clerk of the Court", which is generally a position in RL courts, but would be more akin to a deputy than the RL position. This person, or persons, could be in charge of day to day functions, and could be given observer status so they can see how the sausage is made. I would like to hear your thoughts on if this is a reasonable idea, and what sorts of responsibilities this position should have.

Homework
Something I have had time to reflect on recently is how reactive our court is and I wanted to figure out something that could keep us sharp. My initial idea was to create mock scenarios for us to practice, but I am hesitant to do so because that could be viewed as biasing ourselves for potential future cases, though I am not totally against developing the idea if there is consensus. My next idea was to do a sort of regular homework assignment where we look through a case and evaluate how it was conducted, what conclusions were reached, and how we would have ruled in that case. I want us to be able to practice and gain a deeper understanding of the Court, and that seems like a good way to go about it.


These are just some ideas that I think could help us and the Court. I would love feedback and any ideas you might have.

Here's to an awesome term! :cheers:

DD
 
I haven't had a chance to think about these issues yet, but I can make a valid argument to be chosen as Chief Justice, inasmuch as I have previously held that position for three sets of two consecutive elected terms (when that office was separately elected.) I was the founding Chief Justice of the Court in 2005 in fact. This will be my seventh elected term on the Court and my first under my third Constitution.

As to Deputies, the real question here is having a set of pre-qualified Temporary Hearing Officers, both to fill in when needed, and I hope that at a minimum could be used to supervise pre-trial and discovery/evidence preps for trials. I think we have an inherent issue when the justice moderating a trial and deciding the facts is also supervising and ruling on evidentiary and other pre-trial questions related to evidence preparations. If we can get a few consistently available THOs, then we may be able to avoid that problem and perhaps find a way to have a three member appeal panel for every case that does not involve a Justice reviewing his or her rulings at trial. (At some point, I hope to ask the RA to allow the election of a fourth justice so the Court can set up a regular rotation of Justices so that the moderating Justice at a trial will not be part of a three-justice panel for appeals.

For some of us, practice trials might be useful but the task is more complicated than it looks. Reviewing trials that are completed may be useful on a selective basis, if a case is not appealed; however, we'd be doing that review of cases thing in an appeal to begin with, so I would think that might be a duplication of effort. A review with a eye on determining if our rules or our laws need amending would be helpful, though, as I'm not sure the R.A. is always in a position to consider such changes when they aren't involved in overseeing cases.
 
Not the best when it comes to putting my thoughts into words. However, greetings.

For Chief Justice, I believe both of you all would be great with the position. I have no intention of holding the position with my current experience (or lack-thereof). With only one of y'all being able to hold the position, I have to say I support DD for Chief Justice.

Deputies is going to be hard for me to put my thoughts down. I can see the benefits of having a deputy(ies). I do like Grosseschnauzer's idea of pre-qualified THOs. I'm not so sure on the Clerk, but it's definitely not too farfetched. However, how beneficial are deputies to the court at the present moment is my only major thought.

As for a practice trial, it'd be really useful for me. However, the burden of creating one might be more than what the outcome would be. I've always learned better by actually jumping into something and improving along the way. Thinking beyond myself, practice trials could be interesting for us all, but it might, again, be more of a burden getting one together than the outcome's experience would provide.

Please excuse this if it seems like a jumbled mess.
 
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