I happen to like the idea that the RA can consider possible legislation or action outside of just, you know, discussing a specific proposal that is written out. Fiji recently tried to pitch a resolution which in practice was more like a pre-discussion of an eventual proposed amendment to the constitution. I think it would be good for us to do more of this, especially when tackling topics that could go so many different ways and have been brought up in several different forms. The way I see it, if this is a legislative body, its members can step up and give a speech or talk about an issue they want to talk about. In that spirit, I would like to speak at length about our court system.
I was inspired to post this thread following recent events. As many of you know, I recently became the Chief Justice following Pete's loss of citizenship. This is not some unusual occurrence either - I struggle to think of a single term where at least one justice did not lose their position on the court. The court is an international joke, not to mention endlessly memed in this region. And like the old attorney general office, it serves most often as a storage space for players in TNP who are between jobs or looking for something else to do, but will find themselves instead with nothing to do. And when they do have something to do, that negative reputation and the type of talent attracted frequently results in outcomes where people make mistakes and fumble the few cases they actually hear. I think this has gotten worse in recent years, because we used to have very legal-minded players who genuinely enjoyed playing lawyer and judge, and nowadays we struggle to find capable or interested people to step up and occupy all seats on the court.
When I ran for Justice in March, I was hoping to find a way to help fix some of these problems. I have had a front row seat on how difficult that actually is. And I'm not going to lie, I've been really frustrated at times when trying to work on this court. I don't believe one person can or should try to take on a dramatic changes by himself, and I do not doubt the sincerity and good intentions of my fellow justices, but they are clearly used to this glacial pace our court is infamous for. And when I really think about it, I can't blame them! What could we do without hearing an actual case? Nibble around the edges I guess. And we tried. We tried to modify court procedure to get around the errors of the last court case, but at the end of the day, we still depend on the person hearing the case to succeed or fail no matter what the procedure says. We toyed with the idea of a system for court clerks, but again, what are they going to do? The justices don't have anything to do, what would their clerks do but learn how to twiddle their thumbs from the experts?
No, I have come to the conclusion that there isn't any legislation or policy that can magically make justices better at hearing cases, or give them something to do for a whole term. We have to be content with the fact that the justices are reactive, and that sometimes there just won't be any court business. Seeing as that is the case, and seeing the kind of work to be done behind the scenes, I don't see the harm in imagining a different way to handle the court. Truthfully, I was prepared to call for an AGORA Act-style transformation of our court along these lines, and in my most extreme moments, wholesale abolishment, especially after what happened in the previous term. But the biggest shift in my thinking that has come from serving as a justice is that...it kind of doesn't matter. This honestly comes down to how you personally prefer to balance a handful of factors: justices are reactive and will most likely often have nothing to do, regardless of how they are selected; and "great" justices are rare because it takes a lot more talent to be good at play-court than any other aspect of this game. Right now we accept that sometimes we will get a bad justice or a botched case, and sometimes people will occupy their time with these roles that often ask little of them and keep them away from other areas of government for the duration of their term. We can take action to try to mitigate that - we can make a system that only calls on people to be justices during a trial, and we can make it possible for them to serve in multiple offices at once - McM's proposal takes this approach. We can try to encourage justices to have better skills and talent by creating a basic standard through a bar system, similar to the one being proposed for the prosecutors, and we can make it harder for just anyone to get in by ceasing elections and relying instead on RA confirmation.
Personally, I favor a system that has a bar for prosecutors and justices, one that all prospective justices must be part of, and then having the justices be chosen from a pool as needed to handle cases. Whether they are elected to be put in that pool or confirmed in the RA honestly doesn't make much of a difference. I feel like elections encourage some to do some really foolish and joking things, particularly for the court elections, since we have the aforementioned negative reputation. Appointments and confirmation would probably encourage people to take it a bit more seriously, but yeah, I can see how that's not as fun. I have come to the conclusion that as disappointing as this experience was, as much as I felt I was unable to do much to reinvent the wheel from inside the court, maybe that's just how it is. Maybe it's fine. But I felt that the least I could do, given how I leaped into that race, and what I had hoped to do on the court, was share these observations and kick the tires of potential court reform. It may be that most of us decide that leaving well enough alone is alright, and now that we've had a quiet term and the frenzy of cases is past us, maybe we can more clearly see what it is we want out of our court and how we might look at addressing these things. I welcome your thoughts, and depending on how this goes, may try my hand at some legislating, or decide to close the book on this particular topic.
I was inspired to post this thread following recent events. As many of you know, I recently became the Chief Justice following Pete's loss of citizenship. This is not some unusual occurrence either - I struggle to think of a single term where at least one justice did not lose their position on the court. The court is an international joke, not to mention endlessly memed in this region. And like the old attorney general office, it serves most often as a storage space for players in TNP who are between jobs or looking for something else to do, but will find themselves instead with nothing to do. And when they do have something to do, that negative reputation and the type of talent attracted frequently results in outcomes where people make mistakes and fumble the few cases they actually hear. I think this has gotten worse in recent years, because we used to have very legal-minded players who genuinely enjoyed playing lawyer and judge, and nowadays we struggle to find capable or interested people to step up and occupy all seats on the court.
When I ran for Justice in March, I was hoping to find a way to help fix some of these problems. I have had a front row seat on how difficult that actually is. And I'm not going to lie, I've been really frustrated at times when trying to work on this court. I don't believe one person can or should try to take on a dramatic changes by himself, and I do not doubt the sincerity and good intentions of my fellow justices, but they are clearly used to this glacial pace our court is infamous for. And when I really think about it, I can't blame them! What could we do without hearing an actual case? Nibble around the edges I guess. And we tried. We tried to modify court procedure to get around the errors of the last court case, but at the end of the day, we still depend on the person hearing the case to succeed or fail no matter what the procedure says. We toyed with the idea of a system for court clerks, but again, what are they going to do? The justices don't have anything to do, what would their clerks do but learn how to twiddle their thumbs from the experts?
No, I have come to the conclusion that there isn't any legislation or policy that can magically make justices better at hearing cases, or give them something to do for a whole term. We have to be content with the fact that the justices are reactive, and that sometimes there just won't be any court business. Seeing as that is the case, and seeing the kind of work to be done behind the scenes, I don't see the harm in imagining a different way to handle the court. Truthfully, I was prepared to call for an AGORA Act-style transformation of our court along these lines, and in my most extreme moments, wholesale abolishment, especially after what happened in the previous term. But the biggest shift in my thinking that has come from serving as a justice is that...it kind of doesn't matter. This honestly comes down to how you personally prefer to balance a handful of factors: justices are reactive and will most likely often have nothing to do, regardless of how they are selected; and "great" justices are rare because it takes a lot more talent to be good at play-court than any other aspect of this game. Right now we accept that sometimes we will get a bad justice or a botched case, and sometimes people will occupy their time with these roles that often ask little of them and keep them away from other areas of government for the duration of their term. We can take action to try to mitigate that - we can make a system that only calls on people to be justices during a trial, and we can make it possible for them to serve in multiple offices at once - McM's proposal takes this approach. We can try to encourage justices to have better skills and talent by creating a basic standard through a bar system, similar to the one being proposed for the prosecutors, and we can make it harder for just anyone to get in by ceasing elections and relying instead on RA confirmation.
Personally, I favor a system that has a bar for prosecutors and justices, one that all prospective justices must be part of, and then having the justices be chosen from a pool as needed to handle cases. Whether they are elected to be put in that pool or confirmed in the RA honestly doesn't make much of a difference. I feel like elections encourage some to do some really foolish and joking things, particularly for the court elections, since we have the aforementioned negative reputation. Appointments and confirmation would probably encourage people to take it a bit more seriously, but yeah, I can see how that's not as fun. I have come to the conclusion that as disappointing as this experience was, as much as I felt I was unable to do much to reinvent the wheel from inside the court, maybe that's just how it is. Maybe it's fine. But I felt that the least I could do, given how I leaped into that race, and what I had hoped to do on the court, was share these observations and kick the tires of potential court reform. It may be that most of us decide that leaving well enough alone is alright, and now that we've had a quiet term and the frenzy of cases is past us, maybe we can more clearly see what it is we want out of our court and how we might look at addressing these things. I welcome your thoughts, and depending on how this goes, may try my hand at some legislating, or decide to close the book on this particular topic.
