Neat!
Kondratev is correct about a portion of my concern. Basically, there are a couple schools of thought on "shall" - one says that it is the future tense of "will" and should be treated as such; the other (predominantly a legal one) interprets it as having some obligational bearing and requirement. The clearest way I have seen the obligational wording rephrased is as "has a duty to".
This straight rephrasing obviously works better in some cases than in others, but there are two good examples in the proposed clause, and a third in the original. Taking them one at a time:
- The WA Delegate has a duty to not exercise the power of ejection or banning unless expressly authorized by a specific action of a government authority of the region pursuant to the Constitution or to the Legal Code.
- The regional power of ejection and banning has a duty to not be granted or exercised, nor forum bans imposed, unless expressly authorized pursuant to the Constitution or the Legal Code.
- Any ejected or banned nation has a duty to have prompt recourse to judicial review of the matter.
The first one is an almost perfect use. The substitution fits in nicely, with the only quibble being the exact placement of the negation. If the whole document were like this, I would have no grounds to complain.
The second one is
awkwardly phrased, but clear enough to grasp the intent. There exists a duty or obligation not to grant or exercise or impose a ban without authorization. Most of the awkwardness comes from the duty not being assigned to anyone, but rather being free-floating - almost as if the grant or exercise or imposition itself is what contains the duty. Still, it is clearly in line with the overall approach.
The third one is where passable turns into failure. No ejected or banned nation has any duty or obligation to seek judicial recourse (or, in the weird wording present there, to recourse to judicial review) - they have a
right to the
option. The legal obligation in this case is actually oppositionally incumbent; it requires the court to grant that review upon request.
The only way the use of shall in the third clause makes any actual sense is for it to be taken as the other usage of the word - the future tense of will. It is this practice, the mixing and matching of words so that they do not
mean the same thing or
refer to this same thing throughout our
binding legal documents that drives me absolutely bonkers. Another good example is that we have clauses where "government" refers to the whole thing and ones where it refers solely to the executive branch. This kind of inconsistency has led to a number of requests for review in the past, and even still there's not always clarity - because there are more than two ways to rephrase the word, including replacing it with "may" (as in granting or denying permission") or replacing "shall have/be" with straight-up statements of fact: "has/is" or "have/are". It's a
nightmare.
In terms of Elu's requested language... I think a huge part of the problem we're having here is that we're trying to include both rights of nations and governmental checks in the same sentence of the same clause of the same document. Even if we grant that it's appropriate to include both kinds of things in one document (which I'm fine with, if we consider it a Bill of Rights and Protections) this addition of a New Kind of Thing (the power to grant banning powers) seems like it warrants its own clause. It does not have to be shoved into the same clause as the protection against
being banned. With that in mind, I propose this:
8. No nation may be ejected or banned from The North Pacific, nor banned from the regional forum, unless expressly authorized under the Constitution or the Legal Code. All nations ejected or banned from The North Pacific have the right to prompt judicial review of their removal from the region.
9. No nation may grant another nation the power to eject or ban nations from The North Pacific unless expressly authorized under the Constitution or Legal Code.
