Court Amendment Act

mcmasterdonia

mcmasterdonia

Just like a queef in the wind, so is life
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TNP Nation
McMasterdonia
Article 4 of the Constitution of The North Pacific will be amended as follows:

Article 4. The Court

1. The Court will try all criminal cases and review the constitutionality of laws or legality of government policies and actions.
2. Reviews of laws or government policies and actions must be made by request of an affected party unless there is a compelling regional interest in resolving it.
3. The Court will consist of at least five, but no more than seven citizens appointed by the Delegate and confirmed by a two-thirds majority vote of the Regional Assembly.
4. Citizens will be exempt from constitutional restrictions on simultaneously serving in government official positions in more than one of the executive, legislative, or judicial categories for purposes of their appointment to The Court.
5. Neither the Delegate, Vice Delegate, or the Speaker of the Regional Assembly, may serve on the Court.
6.. The term of a Justice will be six months, beginning on the day they take the Oath of Office. The Delegate does not have the power to remove a Justice..
7. The Court shall select a Chief Justice among themselves.
8. The Chief Justice will administer the rules of the Court. Where no rules exist, the Chief Justice may use their discretion.
9. The official opinion of the Court in any trial or review will be binding on all Government bodies and officials.
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I have included the marked up version below.

Article 4. The Court

1. The Court will try all criminal cases and review the constitutionality of laws or legality of government policies and actions.
2. Reviews of laws or government policies and actions must be made by request of an affected party unless there is a compelling regional interest in resolving it.
3. The Court will consist of at least three Justices five, but no more than seven citizens appointed by the Delegate and confirmed by a two-thirds majority vote of the Regional Assembly. who will select a Chief Justice among themselves.
4. Citizens will be exempt from constitutional restrictions on simultaneously serving in government official positions in more than one of the executive, legislative, or judicial categories for purposes of their appointment to The Court.
5. Neither the Delegate, Vice Delegate, or the Speaker of the Regional Assembly may serve on the Court.
6. The term of a Justice will be six months, beginning on the day they take the Oath of Office. The Delegate does not have the power to remove a Justice..
7. The Court shall select a Chief Justice among themselves.
8. The Chief Justice will administer the rules of the Court. Where no rules exist, the Chief Justice may use their discretion.
9. The official opinion of the Court in any trial or review will be binding on all Government bodies and officials.
6. Justices will be elected by the Regional Assembly by a plurality vote every four months.
 
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In my opinion, the current approach taken to our court mirrors that of an American state. That is a court that is elected, election promises, and generally our approach to the judiciary. Over the years though, our region has matured considerably. The Court is needed far less today than it once was. Though arguably there has been an uptick in election related court hearings :P

Secondly, it is often claimed that it is difficult to campaign to be a justice. i.e. that it is hard for them to draft platforms, offer campaign promises, or as we saw some recent elections even to demonstrate some minor understanding of the law is too much to ask of a candidate.

Thirdly, in some respects the Court can be seen as a waste of a person's talents. In that it would require them to sit there for four months and are therefore mostly unable to serve in another capacity. It also conversely means that people who want to do other things will never consider the Court.

So the model I propose essentially makes the court like the election commission in terms of “government official status”. There would be more members appointed on a rolling basis, which will minimise the chances of COIs and eliminate the need for THO’s and standby hearing officers.
 
What about adding a line that a justice cannot be a prosecutor during their term?
 
Since we intend to have more Justices under this system, perhaps what can be done regarding appeals is that a panel of three Justices hear the case first, and then, if their decision is appealed, it gets decided on by the full court/Justices that weren't involved in the original ruling?
 
I really like this reformulation at its core. The Judiciary of course is vital to our system, but I think having active participators in the regional government elsewhere keeps the Justices themselves from becoming complacent or less active. I very much support this.

I also like Gorundu's idea. As a Justice I can tell you that if there are too many cooks in the kitchen deliberating it can slow the process exponentially. I think 3 remains the perfect number for general cases, and a appellate clause would be good. Perhaps there could be a risk in it to keep all cases from being appealed. A criminal case for instance may risk greater punishment by appealing for instance.
 
I quite like this idea. I’m interested to see how we can fine tune it and turn it into something that’s most optimal, but on the surface I can definitely support the concept.
 
My first point is that this is dealing with article 4 of the constitution, not article 5.

Secondly, if Justices are being exempt, would article 6(5) not also need to be amended (or removed altogether) to remove Justices from being part of the judicial category?

Also, would article 5(4) need to make reference to justices being exempt from the judicial category since, should this bill pass, there would be no positions that fall within the judicial category.
 
I don't think the delegate needs more power over the judicial branch.
 
High threshold for RA confirmation, longer term that in many cases will outpace the delegate’s, an inability for the delegate to remove the Justice...I’m not sure I agree with your characterization that the delegate would have “more power over the judicial branch.” There’s this persistent notion that appointments are some major coup for the delegate despite the very careful checks that are included and the very high scrutiny that people such as yourself apply to them. As we saw just a few days ago, this scrutiny is so high that even when most people agree on what should happen and understand the goal behind the appointment, there’s still a battle to guard against perceived overbearing action from the delegate.

Do you object to this in principle, or do you deem the checks in the draft insufficient?
 
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High threshold for RA confirmation, longer term that in many cases will outpace the delegate’s, an inability for the delegate to remove the Justice...I’m not sure I agree with your characterization that the delegate would have “more power over the judicial branch.” There’s this persistent notion that appointments are some major coup for the delegate despite the very careful checks that are included and the very high scrutiny that people such as yourself apply to them. As we saw just a few days ago, this scrutiny is so high that even when most people agree on what should happen and understand the goal behind the appointment, there’s still a battle to guard against perceived overbearing action from the delegate.

Do you object to this in principle, or do you deem the checks in the draft insufficient?
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I think I probably object in principle, though I'll admit to being unsure in that position. We've already made prosecution a position potentially prone to patronage, I'd rather not do the same with justices, as with 5 of them, it'd be easier for an under-qualified or otherwise poor candidate to slip through the cracks - like with certain EC appointees who later disappeared.

I also think this just might be too soon, given the obvious kinks we've yet to work out after passing the AGORA Act. I think any change in this regard needs to be incremental, and only taken after we stress test the current system and ensure it's working properly.
 
A two thirds confirmation vote? No judges would exist if that happened.
EDIT: never mind.
 
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I think we ought to take this a bit further and just make it so that the multiple-branch restriction only applies to elected officials. Even if you disagree with that, the proposal conflicts with Article 6 as it stands, so some amendments to Article 6 are needed. Here's my offering:
Article 6 of the Constitution of The North Pacific will be amended to read as follows:
Article 6. General Provisions

1. Constitutionally-mandated eElected officials are the Delegate, the Vice Delegate, and the Speaker, members of the Security Council, and Justices.
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 categorybranch consists of the Delegate, Vice Delegate, and government officials appointed by the Delegate or Vice Delegate, except for Justices.
4. The legislative categorybranch consists of the Speaker, and government officials appointed by the Speaker.
5. The judicial categorybranch consists of the Court.Justices, and government officials appointed by Justices.
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 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 elected office.
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.
10. No elected official may simultaneously serve in both the executive and legislative branches.
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.
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A few notes:

I removed the phrase "constitutionally-mandated" because it's redundant. All elected officials are mandated in the constitution, and I don't think that's ever going to change.

I changed "category" to "branch", because that has always bugged me. Sorry if that bugs people who think it sounds too American.

I'm not sure why we have defined members of the security council as "elected officials" when that's plainly false, so I fixed that.

Having Justices be appointed by the Delegate means that they can't appoint government officials themselves. They never have before, so I don't see this as a problem, but it still needs to be reflected here. I've also made sure that they won't be considered executive officials, because that would be weird.

Loosening the restriction on multiple offices means that a cabinet minister can simultaneously be a deputy speaker. I don't really see that as a problem either. As amended, the only restrictions on multiple offices would be that the Speaker can't serve in the executive branch, and the Delegate and Vice Delegate can't be deputy speakers. I think this makes good sense, and will save us from constantly carving out exceptions to the restrictions in the legal code.

Speaking of the Legal Code, I'm sure there's a LOT of stuff in there that conflicts with this, so before this goes to vote it definitely needs at least two clauses added to amend Chapter 3 (Judicial Law) and Chapter 4 (Election and Appointment Procedure). I don't have time to get into that at the moment, but I might in the future. Bug me if you want me to.

For an office as important as the court, I feel like there should be set dates for Justices to begin and end their terms. It's been pretty loosey-goosey with the election commission, which is fine because most of the time they don't have urgent responsibilities. But we don't want to start a trial and suddenly realize that a bunch of justices are about to leave office. I think maybe the Delegate could appoint them and the RA could confirm them at any time, but they would not take office until a certain date arrived - perhaps the first day of an odd month. Then we'd always know that terms only expire on the first day of an odd month, and we can keep the court well stocked enough that we aren't going to drop below five suddenly. This is all stuff that would go in the legal code, obviously. Just spitballing.[/quote]
 
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It is definitely an interesting proposal, one that I can't fully understand but that comes from my general misunderstanding of the anglo-saxon (American and English) judicial system and my quite obvious bias towards a more continental base of a system. However, the reasons shown above by McMasterdonia are understandable, but I would like to introduce a bit of a system that perhaps could work, based on a more european system (probably not a surprise coming from me, isn't it?)

I'm taking this idea up thanks to Gorundu's comment, and within a wider selection of Justices, an organization within the court which could both flexibilize the justices, and make sure that in case of colliding of interest, or having already attended to a certain case, another set of justices would be in charge of said one.

Let's consider seven as the "magic number" in this equation. The combination of all of them would be called "Plenary", in extraordinary cases, presided by the Chief Justice which would be in the "lead" of the Court organisation, being the Plenary the main organism of the Court and would be useful in the cases of constitutional interpretation (if it ever comes up).

Beneath, the "Great Room" would be considered with five justices, which would be in charge of the unification of the jurisdiction, of the case law, in case of one of the trials this was shown to be incorrect, to ensure unity in the rulings, and a more organized way of a sort of superior appeal.

And beneath, the "rooms" or tribunals, constituted of groups of three justices which could be assigned difficult cases that would need more effort than a sole justice.

And then the individual justices who can solve simple cases.

This example I give is based on the European Court of Justice, and I believe that if we add some form or organisation like this in some matter of a "mixed system", I believe we could have a more interesting, rich and accessible judicial court.
 
To be honest, running the Judiciary like the election commission wouldn’t cause too many disturbances...

But I like voting :P
 
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