Clarifying Vagueness in Peace Terms Amendment

Dinoium

Legal nerd
-
TNP Nation
Dinoium
Greetings esteemed citizens,

Almost 30 minutes ago, the Delegate signed the Peace Terms Agreement Amendment. While yes this is a great amendment indeed, it includes both a grammatical error and vague wording (which has been apart of the law before the recent proposal was proposed). I spoke with @IkeaRike regarding amending his new law to fix the mistake and he was fine with it.

I hereby propose the following amendment to consideration of the Regional Assembly:

Chapter 6. Regional Assembly Statutes;Legal Code of The North Pacific:
Section 6.4: War
16. A region or organization "at war" with TNP is one which has made a formal declaration, or made acts of war against The North Pacific, or vice versa, as deemed by a three-fifths majority vote of the Regional Assembly.
17. War does not constitute actions taken by or against any army of the North Pacific abroad unless the conflict meets the conditions above.
18. A state of war exists until a formal peace treaty is recognized by the Regional Assembly per existing laws, or other mutual defense agreements are recognized by a simple majority vote of the Regional Assembly.
Chapter 6. Regional Assembly Statutes;Legal Code of The North Pacific:
Section 6.4: War
16. A region or organization "at war" with TNP is one which has made a formal declaration, or made acts of war against The North Pacific, or vice versa, as deemed by a three-fifths majority vote of the Regional Assembly.
17. War does not constitute actions taken by or against any army of the North Pacific abroad unless the conflict meets the conditions above.
18. A state of war exists until a formal peace treaty is recognized by the Regional Assembly per existing laws, or other surrender terms or similaror other mutual defense agreements are recognized by a simple majority vote of the Regional Assembly.



I am open to thoughts and suggestions. Credits for @IkeaRike for giving me permission to amend his new law and for co-authoring this amendment.
 
Why formal debate was shortened I will never know. Bills that have been inactive for some time should never be rushed to vote, and I don't see what the hurry could have possibly been motivated from. There was no pressing time issue or anything.

Edit: As it stands, I am very against this "correction". Mutual defense agreements are a far cry from terms of surrender.
 
Last edited:
Why wasn’t this addressed with the law prior to its passing? You yourself posted several times during the original debate. Why not mention something to McM prior to them signing the bill into law?
 
Mutual defense agreements are a far cry from terms of surrender.
Then what do you suggest? As I’ve said, I’m open to suggestions. And anyways, this is just a draft at the moment.
Why wasn’t this addressed with the law prior to its passing? You yourself posted several times during the original debate. Why not mention something to McM prior to them signing the bill into law?
i did suggest this change prior to the vote though due to miscommunication, Ikea seems to have accidentally added the grammatical error and the error was never changed. I did notice the error way before but I decided not to comment on it as Syr suggested proposing it separately.

By the time I remembered about it after the one month inactivity in the thread, the vote had passed and I didn’t want the bill cancelled. I didn’t see it as a big deal since I only remembered the vague part but when I realized there was a grammatical error, McM had already signed the law. If I had noticed before, I would had let McM know.
Edit: And petitioning for a veto wasn’t on my mind at the time being.
 
Last edited:
As I noted in relation to the original Bill, I do consider there to be scope for further amendment to the clause. I do consider, however, that this proposal is the change that is needed.

There are a number of flaws with the proposal as drafted. First, as has already been noted, a mutual defence agreement is a considerable move away from the current wording of the clause.

Second, it is, in my view, a move that makes the clause substantially worse. I do not consider it likely, to say the least, that the region would ever end a war with an entity by moving into a mutual defence agreement with them, so I see no room for the practical operation of the amendment. Further, by replacing the existing language of "surrender terms or similar" it excludes any possibility for ending hostilities on a basis other than a treaty of peace or mutual defence agreement.

Third, while I think there is argument to be had about the constitutionality of the extant clause (in that surrender terms could amount to a treaty), it seems clear to me that any mutual defence agreement would, in fact, amount to a treaty. It would therefore be wholly subsumed into the operation of the first part of the clause and the part proposed to be amended would, one would think, be entirely inoperable due to its unconstitutional claim to allow a treaty to be effective without ratification by two-thirds of the Assembly.

As to improvements that I think could properly be made to the clause, there is the suggestion I made in relation to the original Bill, to replace "or similar" with "or some other end to a state of war". This would widen the language of the clause to clearly include the possibility of a war ending because the Assembly considers it to have ended. This, to my mind, has a clear advantage over to the arguable requirement at present for a war to subsist until some kind of agreed end, in that in NationStates we can never make our opponent surrender and, consequently, it is arguable that the present clause can create a perpetual state of war.

However, there is another matter which ought to be considered and which was raised by Eluvatar in discussion on Discord. Discussion of these matters thusfar appears to have been directed at the idea of a victory or, at least, a peace that does not disfavour The North Pacific. This clause can operate in the other direction and, in fact, permit a surrender by simple majority of this Assembly. I don't think that was the intention of the previous amendment, certainly it was not mine in supporting it (though I was aware of the point raised by Eluvatar). This could perhaps be resolved by inclusion of a clause to the effect of "No governmental authority of The North Pacific may negotiate any surrender of The North Pacific" or similar, I confess I have not put a great deal of consideration into the drafting and I would think that there will be a better way to do it. Nonetheless, it is something which I think requires further thought and which, hopefully, could be resolved by this Bill, should it proceed further.
 
as Syr suggested proposing it separately.
You contacted me with the idea for this proposal asking for feedback this morning. Ikea's original proposal had already passed by then. When you get criticized, own it instead of pinning it on someone else. I've barely been involved in this situation as a whole.
 
Last edited:
I concur with Darcania in the sense that I too believe ‘mutual defense agreements’ to greatly differ from ‘terms of surrender’. Further, when asked about why this wasn’t mentioned beforehand you gave an answer that doesn’t fully explain your reasoning.

Why couldn’t you have posted in the thread indicating you were working with the bill’s author to correct an issue? Why was this omitted from the formal debate period and why couldn’t it have been brought to light before the Regional Assembly voted on it? It seems to me that you were okay with it passing a vote while it included a grammatical error so long as you could be the one to ‘correct’ said error and effectively pass an amendment yourself.

That is... not a good look, my friend. I stand opposed to this.
 
Last edited:
You contacted me with the idea for this proposal asking for feedback this morning. Ikea's original proposal had already passed by then. When you get criticized, own it instead of pinning it on someone else. I've barely been involved in this situation as a whole.
I'm down with that but I think that would require its own thread, since it's kind of a tangent from this proposal. @Dinoium
 
Huh. I forgot that I had said that earlier. I went back and read the original thread, and I'm not sure why I said that. I think I must have skimmed over Dino's proposal. I don't think posting it separately makes much sense; so I stand by what I've said more recently.
 
Back
Top