[DRAFT] End Justice Act

Hello,

I’d like to propose the following changes to Article 4 of the Constitution of The North Pacific:

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, but no more than five Justices appointed by the Delegate and confirmed by a two-thirds vote of the Regional Assembly.
4. The term of a Justice will be six months, beginning on the day they take the Oath of Office. Once appointed, the Delegate does not have the power to remove a sitting Justice.
5. Any member of the regional bar may be appointed to the Court. Citizens will be exempt from constitutional restrictions on holding multiple government offices for purposes of their appointment to the Court.
6. Justices who are confirmed by the Regional Assembly will select a Chief Justice among themselves as proscribed by law.
7. The Chief Justice will administer the rules of the Court. Where no rules exist, the Chief Justice may use their discretion.
8. The official opinion of the Court in any trial or review will be binding on all Government bodies and officials.

Click to expand...

Additionally, I'd also like to propose that Chapter 4, Section 6 of the Legal Code of The North Pacific be struck out in its entirety pending the passage of the aforementioned consistutional amendment:

Section 4.6: Judicial Elections
34. The election of the Justices will begin on the first day of the months of March, July, and November.
35. If there are more than three candidates for Justice, voters may rank the candidates, with the candidate ranked 1 being the first preference, the candidate ranked 2 being the next preference, and so on.
36. All first preference votes will be counted first. If no candidate achieves a majority, the candidate/s with the least votes will be eliminated, and the next preference of all voters who had voted for the eliminated candidate as first preference will be counted, with the process repeated until a candidate achieve a majority.
37. When a candidate achieves a majority, they will be elected. All votes will then be recounted using the same process, ignoring all preferences for the elected candidate. This will be repeated until three candidates are elected.

Click to expand...

Today, as we begin the February 2024 Judicial Elections cycle with the candidacy declarations period, I'm reminded of an amendment that I first began working on back in December of this past year. In short, what these amendments seek to do is eliminate judicial elections entirely and replace them with a system whereby the Delegate is empowered to appoint Justices to the Court. It sets new term limits for Justices at six months from the day they take their oath of office and uses language that’s consistent with how the Electoral Commission is structured in Chapter 4, Section 3 of the Legal Code.

I chose to include the stipulation that it has to be a two-thirds vote rather than a simple majority vote to successfully confirm a Justice appointment so that we, the citizenry, feel that the power of the position is being appropriately acknowledged and given due consideration. Depending on the feedback that this proposal recieves, however, I'm open to adjusting this threshold to match what our collective preferences are.

Moreover, it restricts the pool of eligible Justice appointees down to only members of the regional bar. Much like with the Election Commission, however, Justices are exempt from constitutional restrictions on holding multiple offices. So no longer will someone have to leave the executive to seek a seat on the bench in the judiciary or vice versa. Finally, it explicitly states that the Delegate does not have the power to remove sitting Justices from the bench.

So, to clarify, Justices would not serve at the pleasure of the Delegate. The Delegate would not be able to retract an appointment once it’s made, nor would there be any mechanism to remove a sitting Justice from the bench short of their term expiring or a successful recall motion passing this body.

As an added note, I'm intending for this to be brought to vote as an omnibus bill. The reason being because, as I see it, Chapter 4, Section 6 of the Legal Code would also need to be amended in order for the preceding constitutional amendment to make any sense. I don't want these changes to necessitate both a constitutional amendment and a legal code change as separate motions/votes, so I figured that the best solution would be for us to vote on it as one omnibus motion since the constitutional amendment portion of this act renders the sectioon from the legal code completely unnecessary.

I look forward to seeing how people think/feel about these proposed changes. I know that, in the past, we've talked about putting additional judicial reforms through the RA but rarely have we had someone actually put pen to paper (or, rather, keyboard to document ) and be the catalyst for those reforms.

Disclaimer: This is a legislative item that I am pursuing as a private citizen. My proposing of this amendment is not indicative of it being part of the executive's legislative agenda, nor am I proposing this in my capacity as the current Minister of Defense. I'm also not someone who possesses much in the way of experience when it comes to the judicial affairs of the region, so I invite those who do to please give their input here on the system that I envision.

I feel like the regional bar requirement is useless - the Bar Commission is by law composed of a Justice selected by the other Justices, one appointed without confirmation by the Delegate, and one appointed with confirmation by the Court.

Either we would need a new method of selecting Commissioners that wouldn’t be controlled by the same people required to be on the Bar to hold office or we should just merge the Court and Bar Commission if we’re to make the former appointed & confirmed.

No thanks. I appreciate the work and thought put into this but I can't support a proposal that makes justice a patronage appointment.

Also I rather think the prohibition on holding multiple offices should remain, at least for the Delegate/VD/Speaker vs Court in this instance.

What does this accomplish exactly?

All this does is require a justice candidate to ask the delegate for a nod, and if approved, they need to be 'elected' by the RA. At best this slightly filters a tiny group of qualified individuals, and at worst allows the delegate to hand pick their court.

What problem is this aiming to solve?

Lord Dominator:

Also I rather think the prohibition on holding multiple offices should remain, at least for the Delegate/VD/Speaker vs Court in this instance.

Click to expand...

I agree with this.

Otherwise, I like the idea in general. I think perhaps the term length could be longer. But it’s not a huge deal.

What is the rationale for doing away with Judicial elections? I don't really see the benefits of this change.

Also, I don't think the regional bar is currently referenced in the Constitution either.

Making the bench from Delegate appointments, makes the court a bigger political animal then it is. Furthermore, if the delegate does not like the way the person rules, hey he can just not reappoint him. so as a justice you are being pushed to rule the way the delegate wants or you have to sit aside till the next delegate and hope he appoints you instead of the favorable bench.

for example, Ghost hated the ruling from the court on sanctions and treaties. under this law he can now refuse to reappoint the bench, appoint people who will rule in his favor and appeal the ruling.

NAY.

I echo MJ and Dreadton's concerns.

Why?

I would like an explanation for why judicial elections should be discarded with. If we are to do so then justices should be appointed not by the decision of the Delegate alone. Perhaps another position such as the Speaker could also require approval of a justice’s appointment. In general though the appoint of a justice should not be placed solely in the hands of the Delegate.

And like what Lord Dominator has stated the restrictions on holding multiple offices should remain and not be exempted. Removing this may alters a justice’s ruling which may have been done in an otherwise non-bias way.

I echo the concerns regarding the elimination of judicial elections brought up by others here, and would also like to know the reasoning behind this.

To have an independent juditial power now means to have it dissolved between the legislative and the executive?
Completely against.

Big no from me.

It's a No from me, fam.

@Robespierre, you did say on Discord about 2 weeks ago that you had some justification for this that you would like to share.

Even if the bill as of now is DOA, I think it would still be interesting if you could share your reasoning for this bill.

I second Lord Noah and would like to know the motivations behind the proposal.

I'd like to begin by apologizing to everyone who might've been waiting for me to follow-up on this after my original post. This response won't be done in my usual style of verbosity and prosing. But hey, some of you might actually enjoy that better. (Note: Still gonna be long and textwall-y though because old habits die hard )

Anyway, let's get the biggest question out of the way first:

TlomzKrano:

What problem is this aiming to solve?

Click to expand...

Lord Nwahs:

What is the rationale for doing away with Judicial elections?

Click to expand...

El Fiji Grande:

Why?

Click to expand...

Ferdinand IV:

I would like an explanation for why judicial elections should be discarded with.

Click to expand...

Antonius Kaizuniviel:

I echo the concerns regarding the elimination of judicial elections brought up by others here, and would also like to know the reasoning behind this.

Click to expand...

Whenever I start to think about what can be reformed in our region, I don't immediately begin with whatever appears to be the most obviously problematic of our processes. I get that's a bit of an unconventional approach and I think that all of you are completely right to ask the question of why, but I don't really see anything wrong with seeking to improve a system without any proposal with merit to it being presented as a reaction to something else or immediately after something's obviously gone wrong.

To be clear, improving our system is what I believe I'm doing in proposing this. It's not that anything is "wrong" or "broken" in the status quo, but I do think that the system that I'm proposing is preferable for a number of reasons which I'll get to in a miniute. My only motivation for introducing this is to inspire a conversation, see where we're all at, and test the waters of what we don't like in a way that's documented and can be referred back to in future discussions.

Now, as for why, my rationale is fourfold. For starters, I think that this system offers us more flexibility when it comes to judicial affairs. Under what I'm proposing, the Court's composition isn't always fixed at three Justices and it's more consistent with how we've already chosen to handle the Election Commission's makeup. While the importance of an independent judiciary has been brought up already in this thread and elsewhere, I wouldn't say that what I envision constitutes the elimination of an entire branch of government. At least, that's not what I'm trying to do here.

So what do I mean by flexibility? Well, ideally, not all of the Justices sitting on the bench would be appointed or have their terms expire at the same time as one another. Just like with the Election Commission, ECers come and go and, for the most part, that seems to work just fine. I'll admit that it's possible that's not directly applicable to the Court, but I do think that changing the method by which Justices are seated does carry a number of benefits nonethless. For example, in the event that we have more than three people who could be considered as quality candidates for Justice -- as I would argue that we just did in the March 2024 Judicial Election -- we could actually choose to seat all of them instead of only keeping three of those interested in serving.

Secondly, to build off of my first reason for why I find this system to desirable, I think that our Court functions best and arrives at justice the most accurately whenever a diversity of thought is at play. For me, a difference in judicial philosophies among the Justices that we elect each term is not at all a deterrent. Rather, I see it as a positive. Case in point, on my ballot for this past election, I voted for both Pallaith/Ghost and Dreadton in my top three preferences just as many others did. For those of you who've been around for a while, you'll know that Ghost and Dreadton have some noticeably different approaches when it comes to judicial affairs. So much so that they've publicly clashed on things happening in the Court on a number of occassions.

So naturally, the question then becomes whether or not their different views would hinder the Court's ability to render judgements in the event that they're seated together. Well, in hindsight, we know that they have been seated together and I'm personally fine with that arrangement. But does that mean that I don't also value the legal insights of Elu, Vivanco, or LD? Not at all. I think that each of them brings something different to the table by their very nature, and I also recognize that a future Delegate might appreciate this too. So why turn two of them away from service this term? Judging by the number of votes that they received, they're all held in pretty comparable esteem. We know that they either could serve, have served before, or may want to serve in the future. So, other than the seat limit, what logically prevents us from only seating three Justices per term and keeping the insights of others on the sidelines?

The main objection I've anticipated to this argument is that it may take the Court even longer to render decisions if the bench's membership is increased. That's a fair point, I'll concede. But I actually like the idea that justice/legality can be defined and interpreted by committee and not rely on us concentrating that power in the hands of three individuals who may or may not even be on the bench the following term.

Which, of course, brings me to my next point: The third argument, in this case, that I have in favor of this proposal is that it helps keep continuity wuithin the bench from term to term. We always talk about setting legal precedent and whatnot with court decisions, but the fact of the matter is that the individual legal philosophies of the Justices themselves do and always will matter. That's not a bad thing. It's certainly not a factor that I think should be mitigated to the utmost degree. I'd hate for the Court to be scared of itself and resigned to a state of paralysis simply because a given R4R might change the complexion of what we do here.

But, under the system that I'm proposing, Justices can be carried over with longer times in office to bring about an element of stability and consistency in the Court's collective interpretation of law. We, as citizens, would still retain the power to determine who we do and don't want to continue on the bench. I don't want this proposal to be misconstrued as anti-democratic. More accurately, I see it as democracy in a different way. With the RA comes the lifeblood of our citizens' rights. To speak, to share, to vote, and more. In what I will about to say in my response to Dreadton below, I hope that this will become clearer.

Finally, there's the issue of elections with low participation and their status as elected officials triggering special elections due to unforseen events. Under what I'm proposing, Justices aren't elected officials so this wouldn't happen. Not to call anyone out by name, but we've had Justices who've CTEd while in office and we've had Justices who moved from the bench to the cabinet mid-term.

Elections are long, important processes. They're vital to our democracy, but they can also create complications when ill-timed. If the Delegate is the appointer, then someone would only need present themselves for our consideration in order to replace a Justice that has since vacated office or moved off of the bench. I think it's fairly uncontroversial of me to say that's a much easier and less intensive process than undergoing a special election would be given the aforementioned circumstances. It's straightforward too, I might add.

Dreadton:

Making the bench from Delegate appointments, makes the court a bigger political animal then it is. Furthermore, if the delegate does not like the way the person rules, hey he can just not reappoint him. so as a justice you are being pushed to rule the way the delegate wants or you have to sit aside till the next delegate and hope he appoints you instead of the favorable bench.

Click to expand...

So, switching gears for a moment, let me ask you: Would you be more comfortable with this proposal if I were to include a provision whereby Justices are able to automatically be put up for re-confirmation by the RA without relying on the Delegate to re-appoint them like they do with ECers?

By that, I mean, would it reassure you or others who have similar concerns about this if I were to tell you that legal protections could be established to prevent a possibly vindictive Delegate from intentionally choosing not to re-appoint a Justice on the basis of them ruling in a way that the government feels are unfavorable? Becuase, as you describe it anyway, I can see why Justices might feel compelled to be issue rulings/opinions favorable to the Delegate and their government. If I'm not mistaken, I think that's what MJ is describing when he calls them patronage appointments.

But, let it be known that I'm absolutely willing to compromise on this. I want us to be able to find a happy medium within this framework that works. I can appreciate how you already recognize the Court to be a political animal. Honestly, as far as politics go, I'm not really sure how you can make a position more politically charged than by tying it to an election like we already do. So instead, what if sitting Justices are automatically put to reconfirmation votes upon the expiration of their terms? The automatic thing would, of course, be subject to a Justice going before the RA and indicating that they don't wish to be considered again for whatever reasons they deem fit.

Would that help at all? I'm interested in hearing some feedback on this.

Vivanco:

To have an independent juditial power now means to have it dissolved between the legislative and the executive?
Completely against.

Click to expand...

Sil Dorsett:

"Judicial independence is critical to the functioning of any democracy ... It protects the weak from the powerful; the minority from the majority; the poor from the rich; yes, even the citizens from excesses of government."

Click to expand...

Moreover, although I'm not attempting to eliminate the judicial branch of government as an authority within our region, I am nonetheless curious:

What would you guys say are thew main benefits of an independent judicial power? If you'll indulge me, I'm wondering what you believe judicial independence to be at its core. This isn't a refutation or a gotcha or anything. I'm genuinely interested to know, as I'm unclear on what exactly about elections themselves guarantee this quality of independence.

Robespierre:

So, switching gears for a moment, let me ask you: Would you be more comfortable with this proposal if I were to include a provision whereby Justices are able to automatically be put up for re-confirmation by the RA without relying on the Delegate to re-appoint them like they do with ECers?

By that, I mean, would it reassure you or others who have similar concerns about this if I were to tell you that legal protections could be established to prevent a possibly vindictive Delegate from intentionally choosing not to re-appoint a Justice on the basis of them ruling in a way that the government feels are unfavorable? Becuase, as you describe it anyway, I can see why Justices might feel compelled to be issue rulings/opinions favorable to the Delegate and their government. If I'm not mistaken, I think that's what MJ is describing when he calls them patronage appointments.

But, let it be known that I'm absolutely willing to compromise on this. I want us to be able to find a happy medium within this framework that works. I can appreciate how you already recognize the Court to be a political animal. Honestly, as far as politics go, I'm not really sure how you can make a position more politically charged than by tying it to an election like we already do. So instead, what if sitting Justices are automatically put to reconfirmation votes upon the expiration of their terms? The automatic thing would, of course, be subject to a Justice going before the RA and indicating that they don't wish to be considered again for whatever reasons they deem fit.

Would that help at all? I'm interested in hearing some feedback on this.

Click to expand...

I think it makes me slightly more likely to vote for it but I'm still largely opposed to it, as the Delegate would be appointing justices in the first place. And you can play around with various permeatations on how or who they're appointed but ultimately whoever ends up with that power will be able to exercise a prodigeous amount of patronage and control over the judicial process.

We need to be mindful of ending up like the TNP of the early 2010s, the Osiris of KRO-era, the TSP of the late 2010s or the Thaeccia of today where judicial processes become hostage to a cadre of players intent on using it only to further their own power and control. I'd much rather keep the current system even with its difficulties and deficiencies. The last election showed there's still a number of players willing to run for election and until that changes, I don't see a need to make such fundamental changes to the system.