RPI for Speaker!!

It is heartening to see your promise to introduce some flexibility to counting non-standard votes. Will this approach be adopted with the processing of Citizen applications where the applicant adds their pretitle, but it is otherwise obvious which nation they are applying with?

Democratic Donkeys:

It is heartening to see your promise to introduce some flexibility to counting non-standard votes. Will this approach be adopted with the processing of Citizen applications where the applicant adds their pretitle, but it is otherwise obvious which nation they are applying with?

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That is an interesting question. The issue I have with accepting nations which include their pretitle that is not actually part of their nation name is that there might actually be a nation which has that pretitle in their short nation name. For consistency, I believe it would probably be best to continue rejecting applicants who include their pretitle in their citizenship oath even if there is no other nation that actually has that name so that we don't accept one person because there is no nation sharing their name but deny another because there is uncertainty over which nation is theirs, and so that we might avoid "Why did I get rejected for having a pretitle but they didn't?"

Thanks for your question, and sorry if it's not the answer you were hoping for.

Yours,
[me]

COE having masterfully disposed of my questions, I felt obliged to come up with another. For fairness sake, I'll present it to you as well:

Imagine, hypothetically, that some judicial question comes up that all three of the elected Justices find it appropriate to recuse themselves from consideration. The Delegate presents you with the names of three citizens.

1. What would you check to make sure they were eligible to be Hearing Officers?
2. What kind of nominee would you consider inappropriate as a Hearing Officer even if eligible? (I.e. one with little legal experience, one highly partisan, ...)
3. Would you ever suggest alternative nominees to the Delegate? Would you ever insist on a particular nomination?

Eluvatar:

1. What would you check to make sure they were eligible to be Hearing Officers?

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Well, I would look at the question before the Court and check for any conflict of interest that might exist, as Section 3.2 of the Legal Code states, "6. In implementing the previous clause [the clause stating that the Delegate appoints THOs with agreement of the Speaker if all Justices have recused themselves], any person who has a conflict of interest will be treated as unavailable." I would also make sure that the citizen is not in any office at the time, as the Legal Code prohibits any THO from holding any other office while they serve on the Court. Those are the issues that govern whether or not a citizen is eligible to be a THO according to the Legal Code.

Eluvatar:

2. What kind of nominee would you consider inappropriate as a Hearing Officer even if eligible? (I.e. one with little legal experience, one highly partisan, ...)

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I would consider a nominee inappropriate to be a Hearing Officer if that person is known to be impossible to reach a compromise with; in other words, if that person is known to never be able to reach an agreement with others. A person who cannot reach an agreement with others wouldn't be good as a THO because if they see others' opinions as always wrong, and believe that they are always right, the other THOs might never be able to reach a decision on the question before the Court with this specific person. This, in my opinion, is the only situation in which it would be necessary for the Speaker to disagree with the Delegate on appointing this person as a THO.

Eluvatar:

3. Would you ever suggest alternative nominees to the Delegate?

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I would rarely ever suggest alternative nominees unless I found one of the Delegate's nominees to be ineligible or I deemed one of the nominees inappropriate based on the above standard that I have mentioned. If I simply disliked someone, but I otherwise found them to be eligible and an appropriate choice, I would never suggest an alternative, as that would, by my personal standards, just not be right.

Eluvatar:

Would you ever insist on a particular nomination?

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I would never insist on any particular nomination ever. I believe that that would not be how the Legal Code means this particular check and balance system to work. I quote Section 3.2 of the Legal Code, "5. If all Justices are either vacant or absent or have have a conflict of interest, the Delegate will promptly appoint the needed hearing officers from among available citizens with the agreement of the Speaker" (I bolded the text). Notice how it says that "the Delegate will promptly appoint the needed hearing officers", not the Speaker. It is the duty of the Delegate, as I understand it, to appoint the hearing officers, and the Speaker's duty is to be the 'double-checker.' The Speaker is just required to make sure that the Delegate has appointed eligible citizens to be THOs, and if the THOs are eligible and the Speaker finds them to be appropriate choices, then the Speaker should consent to the appointment, no matter the Speaker's personal opinion of the nominees.


Thank you for bringing that up. I think those were good questions.

Best,
[me]