The Ombudsman bill

Sergio86

Sergio86

TNPer
Reasoning:
The Ombudsman's Office will represent the most closely linked institution of the citizens in the North Pacific, whose functions are essential to control the excesses of power and ensure that the democratic system is not only a constitutional projection but a way of life in society effectively and concrete reality, where the rights and interests of citizens are respected.

The Ombudsman is given the most extensive functions and powers in the matters mentioned above, such as ensuring the effective respect and guarantee of the Bill of Rights, The Constitution and the Legal Code.

The Ombudsman's Office is charged with the furtherance, defense and oversight of the rights and guarantees established in The North Pacific, in addition to defending the legitimate, collective and diffuse interest of the citizens. The Ombudsman's Office shall act under the direction and responsibility of The Ombudsman.

So the proposal:

Article ?:

1. The Regional Assembly will elect The Ombudsman by majority vote every four months.
2. The Ombudsman must be a long time citizen, and must meet with such requirements as to honesty, ethics and morality as may be established by law.
3. If The Ombudsman is temporarily or permanently unavailable to serve, the vacancy shall be filled in accordance with applicable provisions of law.
4. The Ombudsman shall see that the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are effectively respected and guaranteed, investigating either on his own initiative or at the request of any incrimination of which he or she becomes aware.
5. The Ombudsman shall protect and defend the legitimate, collective and diffuse rights and interests of persons against arbitrary acts, abuse of authority and errors committed in the providing of such public services.
6. The Ombudsman shall file unconstitutionality actions, summary constitutional remedies and any other actions or motions necessary in order to exercise the powers indicated above, where proper in accordance with law.
7. The Ombudsman shall pursue any appropriate actions or motions against public officials responsible for violations of or encroachment upon the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
8. The Ombudsman shall ask the competent authority to take the appropriate measures with regard to public officials responsible for violations in accordance by law.
9. The Ombudsman shall submit to the Regional assembly bills or other initiatives for the progressive protection of The Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the Legal Code.
10. The Ombudsman shall place before the appropriate institutions recommendations and observations as necessary in the interest of providing optimum protection of the citizens.
11. The Ombudsman shall not be subject to pursuit for acts relating to the performance of his official functions. In any such case, exclusive competence shall be vested in the Court.
13. Matters relating to the organization and functioning of The Ombudsman's Office shall be determined by law.
14. The activities of this Office shall be governed by the principles of, accessibility, freedom from formalities and proceeding on own initiative.
15. The Ombudsman may appoint deputies to assist them in the execution of any of their powers and duties. Appointment of deputies may be regulated by law.

Article 4. Attorney General and The Ombudsman.

A. The Attorney General.

1. The Regional Assembly will elect an Attorney General by majority vote every four months.
2. The Attorney General will have discretion to manage the prosecution of all criminal cases brought before the Court, save those outlined below, and will also act as a legal advisor to the Delegate, and the Executive, of The North Pacific upon request.
3. The Attorney General shall not be involved in the prosecution of any criminal case in which they are a defendant, a defense attorney, or a witness.
4. The Attorney General may appoint deputies to assist them in the execution of any of their powers and duties. Appointment of deputies may be regulated by law.

B. The Ombudsman.

1. The Regional Assembly will elect The Ombudsman by majority vote every four months.
2. The Ombudsman shall see that the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are effectively respected and guaranteed, investigating either on his own initiative or at the request of any incrimination of which he or she becomes aware.
3. The Ombudsman shall protect and defend the legitimate, collective and diffuse rights and interests of persons against arbitrary acts, abuse of authority and errors committed in the providing of such public services.
4. The Ombudsman may appoint deputies to assist them in the execution of any of their powers and duties. Appointment of deputies may be regulated by law.
Click to expand...

Article 7. General Provisions

1. Constitutionally-mandated elected officials are the Delegate, Vice Delegate, Speaker, Justices, Attorney General and The Ombudsman.
2. Government officials are the constitutionally-mandated elected officials, any officials appointed by them as permitted by law, and members of the Security Council.
3. The executive category consists of the Delegate, Vice Delegate, Attorney General, The Ombudsman and government officials appointed by government officials in the executive category.
4. The legislative category consists of the Speaker, and government officials appointed by government officials in the legislative category.
5. The judicial category consists of the Justices, and government officials appointed by government officials in the judicial category .
6. Any temporary replacement for a government official in the case of an absence or vacancy will be considered a government official in the branch of the official being replaced, regardless of the method of their selection.
7. All government officials, with the exception of members of the Security Council, must maintain citizenship while in office.
8. All government officials will swear an oath of office. The content of these oaths will be determined by law and be legally binding.
9. No person may simultaneously serve in more than one constitutionally-mandated elected official positions.
10. No person may simultaneously serve in government official positions in more than one of the executive, legislative, or judicial categories. Exceptions to this provision may be established by law.
11. Candidates in any election must maintain citizenship for the fifteen days before the opening of candidacy declarations and throughout the election.
12. Government bodies may create rules for their own governance subordinate to this constitution and the laws.
13. Procedures to fill vacancies and absences in constitutionally-mandated elected offices may be established by law.
14. No law or government policy may contradict this constitution.
Click to expand...


Section 4.5: General Elections

29. The election of the Delegate, the Vice Delegate, the Attorney General, The Ombudsman and the Speaker will begin on the first day of the months of January, May, and September.
30. If no candidate for a given office gains a majority, a runoff vote for that office will begin within one day of the first vote ending and it will last for five days.
31. Candidates will be added to the runoff ballot in descending order of how many votes they received. Candidates who received equal numbers of votes will be added the ballot simultaneously. Once the cumulative number of votes received by the candidates on the runoff ballot reaches a majority of votes cast in the previous round of voting, excluding abstentions, no more candidates will be added to the ballot.
32. If no one gains a majority of votes in the runoff vote, the runoff process will be repeated until a candidate receives a majority.

I'd like to propose some additional changes:
Constitution:
Article 5. The Court

1. The Court 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 or the Ombudsman.
2. The 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.
Click to expand...

Legal Code:
Section 7.4: The Attorney General
18. Any deputy appointed by the Attorney General may not serve concurrently as either a Justice or a Temporary Hearing Officer.
19. The Attorney General will have standing in all cases of judicial review brought before the Court.The Attorney General may defend government actions or laws during a request for review.
Click to expand...

And:
B. The Ombudsman.

1. The Regional Assembly will elect The Ombudsman by majority vote every four months.
2. The Ombudsman shall see that the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are effectively respected and guaranteed, investigating either on his own initiative or at the request of any incrimination of which he or she becomes aware.
3. The Ombudsman shall protect and defend the legitimate, collective and diffuse rights and interests of persons against arbitrary acts, abuse of authority and errors committed in the providing of such public services.
4. The Ombudsman may appoint deputies to assist them in the execution of any of their powers and duties. Appointment of deputies may be regulated by law.
5.The Ombudsman and its deputies may not serve in any other government position.
Click to expand...
 
Well... here's some basic issues I see with this bill.

  1. Let's start with the most basic: It looks to me like the Ombudsman has no actual power vested into his office. All these duties can be performed by any Citizen already.
  2. At first glance, this looks like an Office that would combine the Attorney General and the three Justices into one Office... only with even more duties and less actual legal power. What makes this Office different from the AG and Court, and what makes this Office necessary when the AG and Court already exist?
  3. You leave a lot of issues up to the Legal Code, but you have no amendments to the Legal Code to come with this constitutional amendment, leaving a majority of details regarding this Office completely undefined. For reference, as per the Standing Procedures, you can amend more than one document so long as you include the quoted clause as part of the bill.
  4. Creating a new government office requires more than adding an Article. Most notably, changes to Article 7 would be in order. What branch does the Ombudsman fall under? Executive, Legislative, Judicial? None? As well, the first clause would have to be edited since the Ombudsman is elected.
  5. Speaking of Article 7, a couple of clauses in this bill are already taken care of by Article 7 or even the Legal Code Section 4. From what I see, your clauses 3 and 13 are thus redundant.
  6. For clause 2: Define "long time citizen".
  7. Also for clause 2: I see no reason to define "requirements as to honesty, ethics and morality", either here or in the Legal Code. The Ombudsman is already an elected official under this law. Why not leave it to the voters to determine for themselves if the candidates meet their requirements? It may be worth dropping clause 2 altogether because of this (for example, you won't see any winners of the Delegate race if they weren't a long time Citizen, or didn't meet the electorate's requirements for honesty, ethics, and morality).
  8. Clause 14 seems... vague. I'm unsure what exactly you're going for here. For what it's worth, Article 9 of the Bill of Rights already guarantees the "fundamental principles of democracy, accountability, and transparency". I'm unsure what "freedom from formalities" refers to... and "proceeding on own initiative" is already implied by the fact that the Ombudsman is a government officer and a free Citizen, so he/she already has his/her own initiative and can proceed on it freely, so long as he/she doesn't violate the law.

I won't list any further issues I see with this bill since they would be nitpicks, and there's some much bigger issues that would have to be resolved first. If you want, I'd be glad to provide a draft for this bill or help you with a draft that would resolve some of these issues, but I'm unsure what your intent is for a few of these clauses.

Don't let the long list get to you, by the way. I just want to see you learn as much as you can about the law, and believe it would be better all around if your bill is as good as it can be before it goes to vote, especially since this would require a 2/3 majority to pass since it's a constitutional amendment.
 
Thank you for your post

I will try to answer all of your issues in the best way that i can.
Obviously i'm still trying to learn the legal system in this forum.
I'm not trying to impose my views on anybody and this is trying to deal with something missing in the legal system wich is a public defender or peoples defender. The Ombudsman is diferent from an atourney general: the atourney general deals with cases regarding the goverment authorities and how to defend them. The position of the Ombudsman is designed to provide protection for the individual where there is a substantial imbalance of power, in goverment or other any other branch of power. The Ombudsman is a link (and a filter) between the citizen and the courts. It deals with helping and advising common folks in getting into a criminal case scenario. IRL the Ombudsman is not a bidding position and sometimes is voluntary but in other cases is mandatory throug civil systems in some countries. It also has an education component that is to teach people how to defende them self wherever they feel their constitutional rights are not guaranteed.
You leave a lot of issues up to the Legal Code, but you have no amendments to the Legal Code to come with this constitutional amendment, leaving a majority of details regarding this Office completely undefined. For reference, as per the Standing Procedures, you can amend more than one document so long as you include the quoted clause as part of the bill.
Click to expand...

I guess the general idea is to include it in the costitution as a new article, i want it to first try to debate a litle bit with more experience players so i can have some feedback and proceed from then.

Creating a new government office requires more than adding an Article. Most notably, changes to Article 7 would be in order. What branch does the Ombudsman fall under? Executive, Legislative, Judicial? None? As well, the first clause would have to be edited since the Ombudsman is elected.
Click to expand...

At first glance you could include it within the judiciary brand. But it does has its own independence from any other classical form of branch so it will become a new one, or an independent office such as the election commission or the security council.

For clause 2: Define "long time citizen".
Also for clause 2: I see no reason to define "requirements as to honesty, ethics and morality", either here or in the Legal Code. The Ombudsman is already an elected official under this law. Why not leave it to the voters to determine for themselves if the candidates meet their requirements? It may be worth dropping clause 2 altogether because of this (for example, you won't see any winners of the Delegate race if they weren't a long time Citizen, or didn't meet the electorate's requirements for honesty, ethics, and morality).
Click to expand...

You are absolutly right i should take that away

Clause 14 seems... vague. I'm unsure what exactly you're going for here. For what it's worth, Article 9 of the Bill of Rights already guarantees the "fundamental principles of democracy, accountability, and transparency".
Click to expand...

Guarantees as i see it are just writen words, you need institutions to help fullfil those guarantees thats why i wrote that.


I won't list any further issues I see with this bill since they would be nitpicks, and there's some much bigger issues that would have to be resolved first. If you want, I'd be glad to provide a draft for this bill or help you with a draft that would resolve some of these issues, but I'm unsure what your intent is for a few of these clauses.
Click to expand...

I would love that, you see right there is what an Ombudsman does, it helps deals with this kind of issues and the understending of the laws and rights of people

Don't let the long list get to you, by the way. I just want to see you learn as much as you can about the law, and believe it would be better all around if your bill is as good as it can be before it goes to vote, especially since this would require a 2/3 majority to pass since it's a constitutional amendment.
Click to expand...

I don't expect anything less, i know this is going to be a long time debate for me and everyone could learn from it.

I hope everything has being covered, any other question please tell me
 
I think the idea of having a sort of elected anti-Attorney General is interesting.

That said, the Attorney General, while responsible for giving the Delegate's government legal advice, is not supposed to be their lawyer: they serve the region, not the office of the Delegate. Indeed, the Attorney General has successfully prosecuted the Delegate for Gross Misconduct in the fairly recent past.

What powers or duties should this Ombudsman have that an ordinary citizen would not?

It appears that you intend for them, like the Attorney General, to have standing to file requests for review in the public interest regardless of whether they are personally affected. What else?
 
I'm still of the opinion we don't need an ombudsman.
In one spot it almost sounds like your creating the American version of a Public Defender.
 
James Urquhart:
I'm still of the opinion we don't need an ombudsman.
In one spot it almost sounds like your creating the American version of a Public Defender.
Click to expand...
I think I am kinda seeing too that this is some form of public defender.

Though an ombudsman's role, at least in general government, is to look into matters, and then send recommendations to a higher authority - whether that is a court, or government officials or departments.

On the fence on this, as I don't know know enough about TNP's legal system to say whether this is needed or not.
 
Sorry, just want to clarify something. The purpose of this position is to protect the rights of the general public from overreach by government authority?
 
Under your changes to the Constitution you layout that the Ombudsman will protect people's rights and so on, however, what about an individuals right to an attorney? The Bill of Rights already states:

"7. When charged with criminal acts, Nations of The North Pacific shall have a fair, impartial, and public trial before a neutral and impartial judicial officer. In any criminal proceeding, a Nation is presumed innocent unless guilt is proven to the fact finder by reasonably certain evidence. A Nation may be represented by any counsel of the Nation's choosing. No Nation convicted of a crime shall be subject to a punishment disproportionate to that crime."

Wouldn't it just be better to make an attempt at making a regional Public Defender? Of course there would still need to be an option for someone to choose their own counselor outside of the Defender.
Even just doing a more simple route like this would be difficult because most people charged with a crime etc in Nationstates are going to prefer that a friend that they know would be their Defense Counsel.
I see little use for an Ombudsman.
 
An Ombudsman is essentially a mediation officer who deals with redress of grievances which usually would not fall under the heading something which would be adjudicated in a court. Essentially, it would be a "Complaints Department" dealing with general gripes, which, would most likely provide epic amounts of entertainment for one and all. It would be an interesting idea to explore.

I do like the idea of a "public defender".
 
Synnaraka:
Sorry, just want to clarify something. The purpose of this position is to protect the rights of the general public from overreach by government authority?
Click to expand...
Usually yes, but it could be expanded. Probably to educate people on how the law system works and as an institution for legal advice for the general public in a more informal way.

To Answer other questions, "Ombudsman" and "Public Defender" are synonims to me, in spanish and other languages also in other countries, this two words means the same. Probably thats why it has being difficult to explain.
 
I'd like to propose some additional changes:
Constitution:
Article 5. The Court

1. The Court 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 or the Ombudsman.
2. The 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.
Click to expand...

Legal Code:
Section 7.4: The Attorney General
18. Any deputy appointed by the Attorney General may not serve concurrently as either a Justice or a Temporary Hearing Officer.
19. The Attorney General will have standing in all cases of judicial review brought before the Court.The Attorney General may defend government actions or laws during a request for review.
Click to expand...

And:
B. The Ombudsman.

1. The Regional Assembly will elect The Ombudsman by majority vote every four months.
2. The Ombudsman shall see that the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are effectively respected and guaranteed, investigating either on his own initiative or at the request of any incrimination of which he or she becomes aware.
3. The Ombudsman shall protect and defend the legitimate, collective and diffuse rights and interests of persons against arbitrary acts, abuse of authority and errors committed in the providing of such public services.
4. The Ombudsman may appoint deputies to assist them in the execution of any of their powers and duties. Appointment of deputies may be regulated by law.
5.The Ombudsman and its deputies may not serve in any other government position.
Click to expand...
 
Clean Land:
I'd like to propose some additional changes:
Constitution:
Article 5. The Court

1. The Court 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 or the Ombudsman.
2. The 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.
Click to expand...

Legal Code:
Section 7.4: The Attorney General
18. Any deputy appointed by the Attorney General may not serve concurrently as either a Justice or a Temporary Hearing Officer.
19. The Attorney General will have standing in all cases of judicial review brought before the Court.The Attorney General may defend government actions or laws during a request for review.
Click to expand...

And:
B. The Ombudsman.

1. The Regional Assembly will elect The Ombudsman by majority vote every four months.
2. The Ombudsman shall see that the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are effectively respected and guaranteed, investigating either on his own initiative or at the request of any incrimination of which he or she becomes aware.
3. The Ombudsman shall protect and defend the legitimate, collective and diffuse rights and interests of persons against arbitrary acts, abuse of authority and errors committed in the providing of such public services.
4. The Ombudsman may appoint deputies to assist them in the execution of any of their powers and duties. Appointment of deputies may be regulated by law.
5.The Ombudsman and its deputies may not serve in any other government position.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

I will place this as another proposal on the original post

Eluvatar:
"at the request of any incrimination"

I don't understand.
Click to expand...

Do you read it as a context or typo problem??
 
As currently proposed the Ombudsman seems wholly redundant with the functions of the court and AG's office.

Now when countries have an Ombudsman's office its task is usually to deal with complaints about government conduct that is (most likely) legal and thus not something for a court to deal with but is needlessly rude or against the supposed spirit of the law. TNP could probably do with such an office if only for the entertainment value it might provide. To make the Ombudsman able to actually do something we could give him the ability to make recommendations to improve conduct and enforce mediation with mandated maximum response times. At minimum it would structure how vague complaints are dealt with :) Anything actually enforceable would be outside the ombudmans remit but the RA could act if they believe it important enough.

A public defenders office seems redundant to me as defence counsel in TNP isnt paid, except perhaps in peanuts from the gallery.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top