Are there any interesting decisions/rulings by the last elected Court that you would like to share with the less-legally attuned citizenry?
I guess that depends on your point of view. The Court issued two rulings so far this year (there is a third around the corner), so I’m expanding your question slightly simply because there isn’t a ton of content. The bigger one, if you could call it that (again, it’s subjective) would be
On the Loss of Citizenship When Ejected since it’s been one of those long-time coming issues that has been on people’s minds for years. At long last we have dispensed with the practice of someone keeping citizenship for a month just because they got ejected but didn’t bother to return after the conclusion of Z-Day. I think that case is also interesting because I felt we were a lot more down on the idea in general initially but in the end the ruling basically maintained status quo save for that one aspect.
The earlier case this year, issued in the midst of the prior judicial election, was
On the Reconsideration of the Powers of Election Commissioners. This was one of what I would call the purely cleanup rulings, and it just recognizes that previously the Court made a call on what the powers of the election commissioner entailed, and that the law now says what those powers are and the Court’s assertion of that power is no longer the controlling law. Interestingly, in answering your question now I think I now feel the Court didn’t properly handle that particular ruling. There are a few aspects of that ruling that are similar to some of the other rulings that weren’t rendered completely defunct, and I think the Court was a bit over broad in handling that one the way they did.
The idea of “defunct” is a relatively new one, even though it is based on the much older ruling
On Recognizing Outdated Rulings, but it’s crucial to the Court’s recent cases as the Court Examiner has sought to address outdated rulings. They don’t all need to be addressed the same way, and in some cases they are substantially reconsidered. Since the Court is still getting used to how this concept is applied, I think it’s important that it be done consistently and correctly. As different iterations of the Court approach cases like this, we’ll see different styles and approaches, but we should guard against over-applying the concept, since each case is unique and requires a different degree to how the language is reconsidered or shut down.
Obviously there is an unanswered R4R the Court is currently deliberating on, which would seek to apply the defunct designation to the ruling on the permanence of rejected citizenship applicants, as the RA ultimately changed the law to allow reversing such rejections when before that wasn’t an option. This will also involve considering the Court’s handling of a single citizen’s status when that person ordinarily wouldn’t have been a citizen had the rules been followed. If you take a look at that one, Zyvet’s brief shows just how crucial that part of the decision is for existing case law. This one has some dimensions something like the EC cases did not. But outside of these matters, the Court hasn’t had to handle any trials this term so…a relatively quiet term all things considered. Just remember, it’s not always a good thing to live in interesting times.
