[R4R] On the ability of the Speaker to retract incorrect decisions vis-a-vis Citizenship of The Land of Broken Dreams

1. What law, government policy, or action (taken by a government official) do you request that the Court review?
The granting of citizenship by the Speaker's Office to @The Land Of Broken Dreams in spite of a failed Admin check, and the subsequent retraction of the Citizenship.

2. What portions of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Legal Code, or other legal document do you believe has been violated by the above? How so?
Section 6.1 of the Legal Code, as attached below, governs the granting of citizenship:

Section 6.1: Citizenship Applications
2. Any resident may apply for citizenship using their regional forum account, by providing the name of their nation in The North Pacific, and swearing an oath as follows:

I pledge loyalty to The North Pacific, obedience to her laws, and responsible action as a member of her society. I pledge to only register one nation to vote in The North Pacific. I pledge that no nation under my control will wage war against the North Pacific. I understand that if I break this oath I may permanently lose my voting privileges. In this manner, I petition the Speaker for citizenship in The North Pacific.

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3. A copy of the laws applicants are pledging to obey must be available to them at all times.
4. An application for citizenship ceases to be valid if at any time the applicant's declared nation in The North Pacific is not located in The North Pacific.
5. Forum administration will have 14 days to evaluate the citizenship applicant and verify that they are not using a proxy or evading a judicially-imposed penalty. The Vice Delegate will have 7 days to perform a security evaluation and pass or fail the applicant. The Vice Delegate must consult the Security Council if there is reasonable concern as to whether an applicant should be admitted.
6. The Vice Delegate will automatically fail any applicant who identifies as fascist or has engaged in the promotion of fascism.
7. The Speaker will reject applicants who fail an evaluation by either forum administration or the Vice Delegate.
8. If an applicant is rejected for failing an evaluation by the Vice Delegate, the Regional Assembly shall immediately debate the rejection and will hold a majority vote on whether to uphold it. The vote must begin two days after the rejection occurs.
9. The Regional Assembly may overturn a previous decision to uphold the rejection of an applicant by majority vote.
10. If an applicant is rejected for failing an evaluation by forum administration, the applicant may appeal the rejection to the Speaker.
11. In order to appeal the rejection, the applicant must do so within one week of the rejection, must not have been confirmed by administration to have been linked to another forum account or using a proxy, must have a resident nation that is a member of the World Assembly, and must not have already had their rejection upheld by the Regional Assembly.
12. The Speaker will formally grant the applicant’s appeal if the above criteria are met.
13. If the appeal is granted, the Regional Assembly shall debate the rejection and will hold a majority vote on whether to uphold it.
14. The Regional Assembly may overturn a previous decision to uphold the rejection of an applicant by majority vote, unless forum administration has passed the applicant in a subsequent citizenship application, in which case the previous decision to uphold the rejection is automatically overturned.
15. The Speaker will accept all other applicants with valid applications.
16. The Speaker will process applications within 14 days. If an applicant has not been approved or rejected within that time, they will be automatically granted citizenship.

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In particular, the decision to grant The Land of Broken Dreams citizenship will contravene Section Clause 7 of Section 6.1, in which case, the Speaker will have to reject applicants who fail an evaluation by the forum administration.
Also note the rules governing the rights of the Deputy Speaker, extracted from Section 3 of the Regional Assembly Rules:

Section 3 of the Regional Assembly Rules:

Section 3. Deputy Speaker and Vacancies

1. The Speaker may, at their discretion, appoint a citizen as Deputy Speaker. The Speaker may, at their discretion, remove an existing Deputy Speaker.
2. Unless otherwise specified by law, the Speaker may delegate any of their powers and duties to the Deputy Speaker. Delegation under this section does not relieve the Speaker of any of their powers and duties. Any provisions of law related to the powers and duties of the Speaker, when exercised by the Deputy Speaker under the provisions of this clause, shall apply to the Deputy Speaker.
3. When there is a vacancy or absence in the position of Speaker, the Deputy Speaker will assume the powers and duties of the office of the Speaker for the duration of the vacancy or absence, respectively. When there is simultaneously a vacancy or absence in the positions of Speaker and Deputy Speaker is simultaneously vacant, the citizen who is available, has the longest period of citizenship, does not decline the position, and is not otherwise prohibited by law will assume the powers and duties of the office of the Speaker for the duration of the simultaneous vacancy or absence.
4. A citizen's period of citizenship is defined as the amount of elapsed time since that citizen's most recent approved citizenship application without an interruption.

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In particular, Clause 2 states that Provisions of the Law related to the powers and duties of the Speaker when exercised by the Deputy Speaker shall apply to the Deputy Speaker. Therefore, clauses in the Legal Code that apply to the Speaker will also apply to the Deputy Speaker.

3. Are there any prior rulings of the Court that support your request for review? Which ones, and how?
None.

4. Please establish your standing by detailing how you, personally, have been adversely affected. If you are requesting a review of a governmental action, you must include how any rights or freedoms of yours have been violated.
As the Speaker of the Regional Assembly, it is my duty, as sworn, to uphold the laws and ensure that the relevant rules for Citizenship Application are followed. Improper use of my position opens me to criminal charges and/or recall by the Regional Assembly, and in this case, an incorrect decision made can call into question the Citizenship process and result in me and my deputies getting Criminal Charges for wrong actions.

5. Is there a compelling regional interest in resolving your request? If so, explain why it is in the interest of the region as whole for your request to be decided now.
Citizenship is a means for various members to gain access to sensitive information concerning the security of our region. Any mistakes made in granting the citizenship would compromise regional security and can snowball to cause further issues down the line.

6. Do you have any further information you wish to submit to the Court with your request?
Given the limbo of the status of the mentioned applicant, I would like the Court to expedite the review of the decision to allow the mentioned applicant to take the appropriate recourse as soon as humanely possible.

I accept this request for review.

I also accept the petitioner's request for expedited handling of this review and set the time for the submission of briefs to two days.

A Brief on the Limitations of the Speaker to Accept and Reject Citizens

Submitted by Pallaith, in his capacity as a private citizen

The Court is asked whether the Speaker’s actions in granting citizenship to an individual who failed the admin check, and in retracting that citizenship that was given, were legal and proper. This is in fact one of the easiest calls the Court has had to make in a long time, as the answer to both of these questions is simple and the same: the Speaker’s actions were illegal and improper. Legal Code 6.1.7 clearly states that “the Speaker will reject applicants who fail an evaluation by either forum administration or the Vice Delegate.” As has been pointed out already, The Land of Broken Dreams failed the check by forum administration, and yet was granted citizenship anyway. Of course, given when this took place, the applicant would have had the option to appeal the rejection of citizenship as a result of the admin check, but the citizenship being granted, this option became moot. The Speaker’s office failed to apply the law correctly in this situation. The Speaker then sought to remedy this error by taking that citizenship away. This too was also a failure to properly apply the law, as Legal Code 6.2.18-6.2.20 clearly lays out all situations where the Speaker will remove citizenship, and this is an exhaustive list – nowhere in that list is the Speaker empowered to unilaterally remove citizenship, and nowhere in that list is the Speaker permitted to correct mistakenly granted citizenship by removing it. The Court ruled in On Promptness and the Time at which Regional Assembly Membership Begins and Ends that until the Speaker’s office acknowledges citizenship, it is not granted or rejected. So even though the Speaker’s office should have rejected The Land of Broken Dreams from becoming a citizen, declaring that they were a citizen was sufficient for them to be a citizen. And there is no way to get around that on the Speaker’s side – once it is given, it can only be taken away according to the provisions in the Legal Code for removing citizenship.

In terms of remedy, the Court could declare the citizenship invalid. I would note that prior precedent has been to err on the side of not trying to reverse these mistakes after the fact. In On the Permanence of Rejected Applicants for the Regional Assembly, the Court allowed the improper application of citizenship to a member who had been rejected by the Vice Delegate and whose rejection was upheld by the Regional Assembly, on the grounds that the citizen had participated in regional affairs, including legislative votes and elections, as well as serving in office, and that all of those previously completed votes and actions would be subject to reconsideration. The longer the state of citizenship exists, therefore, the more impractical and potentially disruptive an attempt to undo what came before would be. The Court applied similar logic in On the Form of the Oath of a Delegate, when a Delegate’s entire term in office came after an improperly sworn oath. The Court should consider in this case, however, that the error was caught early, and the citizenship was only just granted on May 19, less than 3 days ago. A cursory glance of the nation’s activity would suggest no participation in any recent regional business. Unless this individual voted privately in the ongoing judicial election, it is unlikely anything would be disrupted if the Court ruled that citizenship in this case should be revoked, and even in that case the election has not yet concluded, so the Electoral Commission could easily discount such a vote if it were cast.

As I said, the matter is simple. The Court must conclude the Speaker violated the Legal Code in both cases brought forth in this review. The Speaker’s office granted citizenship to an individual who legally was not supposed to be granted citizenship. The Speaker compounded this mistake by taking another illegal action, an action that the Speaker ought to have known was illegal, as interpretation of the law in this situation is beyond obvious – the Legal Code states all cases where citizenship may be revoked, and this scenario is not among them. The only proper way to resolve this error is not through the Speaker, but through the Court should they decide to order citizenship be revoked in this case. I thank the Court for its time.

Brief

If it pleases the Court, I submit the following brief to assist the Court.

This brief will address the solution adopted by the Speaker with an alternative argument to that adopted in Pallaith's brief. It will also cover the question of remedy.

A Strict Approach

It is submitted that Pallaith's brief is correct in analysis of the underlying illegality in this case. As noted, the Speaker has an obligation to reject applications that are made by applicants who fail evaluation by the Vice Delegate or the Administration (Legal Code of The North Pacific, Section 6.1, clause 7). Consequently, the acceptance of The Land of Broken Dream's application was unlawful.

Pallaith's brief is also correct as to the Court's holding in the decision on Promptness and the Time at which Regional Assembly Membership Begins and Ends, the Speaker's statements perform the granting or removal of citizenship as the case may be and it would appear this is so even where those statements are erroneous in law, albeit that such erroneous statements are (at least) subject to being quashed by the Court.

It is also accepted that Pallaith's brief sets out the approach to the purported removal of citizenship in this case that is most apparent from the face of the law, however, the next section will set out an alternative, purpose directed approach to the law.

The Speaker's Solution

Section 6.1 of the Legal Code of The North Pacific is clear in its purpose in these provisions. The Speaker is afforded no discretion, as the decision on Promptness and the Time at which Regional Assembly Membership Begins and Ends noted. Because the Speaker must accept all valid applications and deny applications that do not pass a security evaluation, applicants must declare a resident nation, they must swear the prescribed oath, and they must not fail the security evaluations. The exception to this is clause 10, which serves as a long stop deadline and prevents the Speaker from effectively rejecting applicants by not taking action.

It would not be in accordance with either the letter or purpose of those provisions for the Speaker to admit an applicant otherwise. Any such admission would be liable to be quashed by the Court as being unlawful. However, it is submitted that the Court could adopt the Speaker's approach as being in line with the purpose of these provisions. Allowing the Speaker to rectify such errors gives effect to the underlying requirements for admission and avoids the need for such errors to be rectified by way of a request to this Court, which take up time and effort resolving what are likely to be clear cut scenarios and risk the build up of reliance interests that can justify an exception to the law (as discussed in the section below).

Such an allowance, however, could not be open ended. If the Speaker were able to do so at any point, this would run precisely the sort of risk of abuse that the Court highlighted in its decision on Promptness and the Time at which Regional Assembly Membership Begins and Ends. However, it is submitted that there is a solution to this provided by the law as it stands, in the form of the long stop in clause 10.

It is submitted that the Court could properly determine that, where the Speaker accepts an application that they have no power to, it remains open to the Speaker to disturb that acceptance within the fourteen day period before an acceptance becomes automatic. Such a decision would fit with the requirements of Section 6.1 that the Speaker can only accept valid applications from applicants who have not failed a security evaluation in removing (or, at least, narrowing the scope of) accidental admissions outside of those requirements. It would also respect the requirement of clause 10, limiting the power of the Speaker.

The Good Faith Exception

Moving to remedy, Pallaith's brief also highlights the decisions on the Permanence of Rejected Applications for the Regional Assembly and on the Form of the Oath of a Delegate, which form a series of decisions together with on Alterations to the Citizenship Oath which have allowed for exceptions to the consequences that might otherwise flow from the Court's decisions.

Those three decisions highlight two features of this exception: one is good faith action, relying on some act the Court has found to be unlawful, on the part of the nation (or nations) that would be made subject to the consequences of the Court's decision; the other is the destructive nature that a wider, retrospectively effective decision of the Court would have. It is submitted that this request for review, insofar as it would have a consequence for The Land of Broken Dreams, lacks both of those features.

They have taken no action in the Regional Assembly nor, it appears, in the ongoing election (insofar as they might have cast a private ballot, that would be invalid in any event as they were not a citizen at the start of the vote (Legal Code of The North Pacific, Section 6.3, clause 21); they have not been named to any government office; they have not participated in any legal proceedings. It can be fairly concluded that they have not relied upon the original, erroneous grant of citizenship to any extent.

There also will be no wider effect of the Court concluding that they are not citizens. For the reasons given above, there is no reason to think that any of the affairs of government have been implicated by The Land of Broken Dreams' citizenship. Consequently, the Court concluding that citizenship to have been unlawful would not harm the regional interest.

For those reasons, it is submitted, that the good faith exception identified in the above cases need not be applied in this case.

Conclusion

It is submitted that the end result of the Court's decision, whether accepting the approach put forward by Pallaith or the more novel approach put forward in this brief, should be the same: the original grant of citizenship should be found to have been unlawful and The Land of Broken Dreams not to be a citizen.

However, this may require different orders depending on the approach. If the approach put forward by Pallaith is followed, it is submitted that, as he submits, the Court should declare both the acceptance and removal of citizenship unlawful, order that the purported removal of citizenship be quashed and order The Land of Broken Dreams' citizenship to be removed. If the alternative approach herein suggested is accepted, the Court should declare the acceptance to be unlawful but the removal to have been lawful.

Unless I can be of further assistance, those are my submissions.

EDIT: fixing bolding

I offer the Court a quick rebuttal to the brief provided by Zyvet: his alternative proposal is literally the definition of legislating from the bench. There is no interpretation that one could reasonably make from existing law that would allow what he has proposed. Just as the question itself is simple, so is the nature of his alternative remedy - it is extralegal and beyond the scope of the Court's powers.

The Court has placed limitations on rights and outlined scenarios where execution of laws and constitutional provisions may be understood outside of a literal sense, but this is taking such a thing way too far. The appropriate remedy to the Speaker's inability to change citizenship status when errors occur is for the law to be amended to allow for the Speaker to make such corrections. I agree with the logic of Zyvet's proposed alternative, and believe it would make great policy if the Speaker's office were empowered to make such a rule, or if the RA made that rule part of the Speaker's acceptable scenarios to revoke citizenship. But this is not what the Court is designed to do. And to suggest that such a result would somehow be consistent with the law's limitation on the Speaker's powers, when it is in fact allowing the Speaker to do something they are not actually legally able to do, and which the RA never intended, would be a bizarre result.

The Court may decide whether or not the citizenship in question should be revoked, but it cannot, and should not, hold that the Speaker's action was lawful.

The time for briefs is over. The Court will now deliberate.

How goes the deliberations?

St George:

How goes the deliberations?

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The change in the court's composition did affect deliberations. The court is nearing a ruling; it is currently working out specifics in the language used in our decision.

The Court took into consideration the inquiry filed here by Fregerson.

The Court took into consideration the legal brief filed here and its addendum here by Pallaith.

The Court took into consideration the legal brief filed here by Zyvetskitstaahn.

The Court took into consideration the relevant portions of the Constitution of the North Pacific:

Article 2. The Regional Assembly

10. The Speaker may appoint deputies to assist them in the execution of any of their powers and duties. Appointment of deputies may be regulated by law and the rules of the Regional Assembly.

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Article 4. The Court

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.

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The Court took into consideration the relevant portions of the Legal Code of The North Pacific:

Chapter 6: Regional Assembly Statutes

Section 6.1: Citizenship Applications

7. The Speaker will reject applicants who fail an evaluation by either forum administration or the Vice Delegate.

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16. The Speaker will process applications within 14 days. If an applicant has not been approved or rejected within that time, they will be automatically granted citizenship.

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Section 6.2: Administration and Loss of Citizenship

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18. The Speaker will promptly remove any citizens whose removal is ordered by the Court, or whose registered nations in The North Pacific leave or ceases to exist.
19. The Speaker will promptly remove any citizens who, for over 30 consecutive days, neither post on the regional forum, nor post on the regional message board with their registered nations.
20. The Speaker will promptly remove any citizens whose registered nations in The North Pacific are not in the World Assembly, except as part of an operation with the North Pacific Army, if their citizenship was granted by the Regional Assembly after failing an evaluation by forum administration.

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The Court took into consideration the relevant portions of the Regional Assembly Rules:

Section 3. Deputy Speaker and Vacancies

2. Unless otherwise specified by law, the Speaker may delegate any of their powers and duties to the Deputy Speaker. Delegation under this section does not relieve the Speaker of any of their powers and duties. Any provisions of law related to the powers and duties of the Speaker, when exercised by the Deputy Speaker under the provisions of this clause, shall apply to the Deputy Speaker.

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The Court took into consideration the post made by forum administration here.

The Court took into consideration the post made by Deputy Speaker Caius here.

The Court took into consideration the post made by Speaker Fregerson here.

The Court took into consideration prior rulings of the Court here, here, and here.

The Court opines the following:

On Standing

The Speaker filed an inquiry for review of the granting of citizenship for The Land of Broken Dreams by Deputy Speaker Caius and the question of whether or not the Speaker has the legal authority to retract a citizenship granted in error. Article 4.2 of the Constitution says reviews of laws or government policies and actions must be made by request of an affected party unless there is compelling regional interest. The definition of an affected party comes from case law ruled in On Standing and the Definition of Affected Party which says an affected party, with respect to one's ability to request judicial review, is someone who reasonably perceives that their rights have been infringed through action or inaction undertaken by a governmental body or bodies. An affected party also, according to the ruling, includes those affected, adversely or otherwise, by laws passed by the regional assembly and policies enacted by the executive and judicial branches of government. Considering this, the Court finds that the Speaker has no personal standing in this review because their rights have not been infringed upon through the actions taken nor have those actions personally affected them in such a way as to make them perceive that their rights were violated.

However, there is a compelling regional interest both in providing clarity to the citizenship process regarding the Speaker's abilities to grant and remove citizenship from a person, and in upholding the integrity of the citizenship process to maintain the integrity of our regional security. With Article 4.2 of the Constitution including the regional interest exception, this case was accepted.

On the Granting of Citizenship

As said in the petitioner’s request, Section 6.1 of the Legal Code governs the process of citizenship. Within the citizenship process evaluations conducted by the Vice Delegate and Administration take place. Should any of these evaluations fail, the Speaker's Office is bound by Section 6.1.7 of the Legal Code to reject the application. In this case, the nation The Land of Broken Dreams failed the administrative evaluation, but their citizenship was officially granted by the Speaker’s Office. For this reason, the Court finds that granting citizenship to The Land of Broken Dreams was unlawful.

On the Retraction of Citizenship

While Section 6.1 of the Legal Code governs the process of how citizenship may be obtained, Section 6.2 of the Legal Code governs the various ways in which citizenship can be removed. The Court agrees with the interpretation that the list of provisions in Section 6.2 is exhaustive and accounts specifically for the provisions within it. Bearing this in mind, it can be seen clearly that the Speaker has the legal authority to remove citizenships so long as they fully meet any of the criteria set in Section 6.2.18-20. As was argued, removing citizenship after granting citizenship in error is not among the aforementioned provisions.

Thus, The Court finds that the retraction of citizenship from The Land of Broken Dreams was unlawful.

There was an interpretation presented to the Court involving Section 6.1.16. This section of the Legal Code states that the Speaker's Office has 14 days to accept or reject an application. If an application does not receive a formal acceptance or rejection after the 14 day period, citizenship is granted automatically. The interpretation presented to the Court argued that the 14 day period does not end after citizenship is granted or rejected. Instead, it is argued that the 14 day period continues from beginning to end allowing the Speaker's Office to use any remaining time in the period to correct any mistakes like granting citizenship in error. This cannot be the case. There is no way to grasp this interpretation from the law or regional custom. In the ruling On Promptness and the Time at which Regional Assembly Membership Begins and Ends an applicant is not accepted or rejected until the Speaker's Office declares it. The exception to this being the 14 day period in which case citizenship is automatically granted if the Speaker’s Office does not give an official acceptance or rejection at all. We take this to mean that a citizen’s application becomes final in two ways: (1) When the Speaker's Office gives an official notice of acceptance or rejection, and (2) if the 14 day period expires without an official response from the Speaker’s Office. As the Court took into account common practice at the time of the Promptness ruling, we shall do the same. Common practice shows that the official declaration of acceptance or rejection from the Speaker’s Office is considered final. Once an official acceptance or rejection is handed down by the Speaker's Office, the application is considered fully processed. The Speaker’s Office does not have the legal room to alter an application's status after the official declaration has been given. Therefore, the law, court precedent, and common practice currently do not make room for the possibility that this presented interpretation can exist.

On the Solution

As it was unlawful to grant citizenship to The Land of Broken Dreams and unlawful to retract it, and the Speaker’s Office cannot legally undo these unlawful actions, it now falls to the Court to decide a solution to the issue at hand. In the ruling of On the Permanence of Rejected Applications for the Regional Assembly it was decided that despite the granting of membership for Treize_Dreizehn into the Regional Assembly, or becoming a citizen, being unlawful, they could continue to hold membership until such a time as they lost citizenship naturally. The main factor behind this decision was that Treize had been acting as a member of the Regional Assembly in good faith for four months and was heavily involved in the Regional Assembly and the Attorney General's Office. To undo their past actions, along with their citizenship, would require a redo of every vote they ever participated in. Performing this, the Court ruled, was impractical, impossible, and an infringement of the Bill of Rights.

The Court continues to agree with this opinion and makes note of a key difference in this case. That difference being the amount of time The Land of Broken Dreams had been a citizen and the amount of involvement they have in the region so far. As it was argued in a brief, citizenship for The Land of Broken Dreams was accepted on May 19th. There is no evidence in the briefs that support the argument that good faith applies to this case nor does The Land of Broken Dreams in this case find themselves in a similar position to Treize as described in case law. As was argued in brief, a quick glance at the nation's activity shows they have not been seen on the forum since May 16th. Therefore they could not have voted in any elections or Assembly votes that date between May 16th and present day so there are no actions to consider.

Therefore, The Court rules the retraction of citizenship from The Land of Broken Dreams overturned. Following this, it is ordered that the citizenship of The Land of Broken Dreams be removed in accordance with Section 6.2.18 of the Legal Code. The Land of Broken Dreams should be notified by the Speaker's Office of their ability to reapply for citizenship and, if they are formally rejected through legal means, they may appeal their rejection in accordance with regional law.