Picairn for Justice - Acta, non verba

Picairn

The Young Statesman
Deputy Speaker
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TNP Nation
Picairn
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picairn
It means "Deeds, not words".

It sounds like irony for a man of action like me to seek a seat on the Court, a place famous for its exotic excitement, but I am, indeed, running for Justice. I have no pretty graphics or grand proclamations to offer all of you this time, just my practical views and approaches to the Court if elected, hence the title of this campaign.

I may not have as much legal experience as other candidates, but I have served as Delegate once and Deputy Speaker three times, the latter of which position I am still holding. I have also tried my hand at writing our laws, namely the Amendment to the Vice Delegate's Citizenship Evaluation Procedure which was passed by the RA, and authored a brief in an R4R concerning Ropanama's ban as a result of their RMB posts which the Court upheld, albeit with certain caveats. Therefore, I have familiarised myself with the laws concerning our executive, legislative and judicial branches, and applied them in my work.

In terms of judicial philosophy, I am a reform-minded and efficiency-driven person. I have long held that if there are reforms which can fix the problems ailing our government system or make it stronger, more responsive, and more resilient, we should adopt them. That means I would welcome any suggestions or proposals to improve the Court, and implement them after careful review and evaluation. I also value efficiency, and one of the ways that can be achieved is by identifying, correcting, and eliminating outdated rulings and other redundancies in our legal system, thus achieving a leaner, simpler, and less byzantine one.

If elected to the Court, I would aspire not only to work with my fellow Justices on ensuring timely delivery of rulings, but also to create resources that can educate the region about our laws. The former I believe is entirely an accomplishable goal, since activity is one of my greatest strengths. Regarding the latter, I would look into revitalising our Court clerk program. From my experience, inactivity usually stems from the fact that staffers (or clerks in this case) have nothing to do, or are not regularly reminded to do their jobs. That can be rectified by simply being attentive and giving them meaningful work, whether that is authoring hypothetical briefs arguing a certain position in current or historical court cases, or deliberating on ideas to reform the Court. I was also quite enamoured with online law guides like this one about the US Constitution, which summarises the context, interpretation, and debate behind every clause of that document. I believe the Court can work on something similar: a simple and practical guide to our Constibilicode, easy to understand for any interested layman. It shouldn't be hyper-detailed and loaded with context or legalese as our laws often do, but is instead written in simple terms for all citizens and residents to know their rights and how our system operates at a base level.

Thank you for reading, I am open to questions.
 
Do you see able to maintain your status as Deputy Minister or Deputy Speaker should you be elected? Wouldn't being part of the Legislative-esque body (which is not quite, because we are in the end all part of the RA, but I mean because of the moderation executed by the Speaker's office over debate) and part of the Executive governing body (as Deputy Minister) permeate the Court's intended independence, should you remain in such places? Or will you choose to be simply part of the Court?

In all, I welcome this new participation to the Justice Race! And I wish you the best of luck, Picairn.
 
Legally speaking, Picairn can't be a deputy speaker and Court justice at the same time, as those are government official positions in different branches.

However, deputy ministers aren't government officials, so there's no legal issue with Picairn continuing in his executive roles (though he couldn't be a minister).

EDIT: Picairn, you've outlined quite a reform-minded agenda. However, the Court can't really do much without the agreement of a majority of the justices. How will you work with the other justices who may be elected to accomplish what you've outlined in this platform? Suppose another justice becomes inactive or unresponsive--how do you think the rest of the Court should respond to that?
 
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Legally speaking, Picairn can't be a deputy speaker and Court justice at the same time, as those are government official positions in different branches.
That is true!
However, deputy ministers aren't government officials, so there's no legal issue with Picairn continuing in his executive roles (though he couldn't be a minister).
And that is true as well! But my point wasn't about there being a legal issue but more of an ethical-esque one.
 
And that is true as well! But my point wasn't about there being a legal issue but more of an ethical-esque one.
I don't really think it's reasonable to expect justices not to serve in other branches. Otherwise, we would be locking three productive members of the region onto the Court for four months, and let's be honest, the Court isn't usually getting a lot of work done. If there is a conflict of interest, I am sure that Picairn will have the integrity to recuse himself.
 
You have my support.
Thank you for your support, I appreciate it.

Do you see able to maintain your status as Deputy Minister or Deputy Speaker should you be elected? Wouldn't being part of the Legislative-esque body (which is not quite, because we are in the end all part of the RA, but I mean because of the moderation executed by the Speaker's office over debate) and part of the Executive governing body (as Deputy Minister) permeate the Court's intended independence, should you remain in such places? Or will you choose to be simply part of the Court?

In all, I welcome this new participation to the Justice Race! And I wish you the best of luck, Picairn.
As Comfed pointed out, I can't be Justice and Deputy Speaker at the same time, so naturally I'd resign the latter position if elected. I understand and appreciate the Court's independence, so if there are cases where I have a conflict of interest, I'd recuse myself. However, I don't intend to resign my Deputy Ministership: Home Affairs needs all the help it can get!

Legally speaking, Picairn can't be a deputy speaker and Court justice at the same time, as those are government official positions in different branches.

However, deputy ministers aren't government officials, so there's no legal issue with Picairn continuing in his executive roles (though he couldn't be a minister).

EDIT: Picairn, you've outlined quite a reform-minded agenda. However, the Court can't really do much without the agreement of a majority of the justices. How will you work with the other justices who may be elected to accomplish what you've outlined in this platform? Suppose another justice becomes inactive or unresponsive--how do you think the rest of the Court should respond to that?
Upon being elected, I'll start by initiating discussions with other Justices on which areas of the Court that need reform. Attempted Socialism has raised several interesting reforms in his previous campaigns that I wish to explore further. After carefully examining the merits of the reforms and reaching a consensus with other Justices, I'd gladly help implement them.

If another Justice becomes inactive or unresponsive on the bench, I think the rest of the Court should try their best to contact them periodically and remind them that they have a job to do. It can be easy to fall into inactivity when the Court is going through a peaceful period, hence my reform-minded agenda would give the Court plenty of important things to do, thereby helping to maintain interest and activity.
 
I think broadly there would be a "pro-reform" majority agenda no matter which of the four (currently declared) candidates win, so I am comfortable that there would be reforms of some kind compared to the last term. Good luck in the race.
 
I think broadly there would be a "pro-reform" majority agenda no matter which of the four (currently declared) candidates win, so I am comfortable that there would be reforms of some kind compared to the last term. Good luck in the race.
That depends on whether there is a consensus and commitment to push those reforms through. This past term has been quiet on the Court despite reforms being touted in previous campaigns, which suggests that the Court either disagreed with the reforms, or there was a consensus but it was not implemented due to time constraints, a lack of commitment, or simply prioritisation of other business. If elected I would examine whether those reforms have been discussed and achieved a consensus, what progress has been made on them, and what the next steps are.
 
A few weeks ago @Pallaith had called our justice system a "sham and an international joke" and described what he believed to be the flaws of the system. Do you agree with his opinions? If so, what do you think are the potential steps that the Court can take to address them? If you don't agree, why not?

Regarding your proposal for court clerks, do you believe anyone will actually be interested in activities such as writing hypothetical briefs? Can you cite any example in TNP or any other region where a project involving working on hypothetical scenarios had been successful? As for writing law guides, this has been an idea proposed by several people in the past. Why do you believe it hasn't been done and what will you do differently to get it moving?
 
A few weeks ago @Pallaith had called our justice system a "sham and an international joke" and described what he believed to be the flaws of the system. Do you agree with his opinions? If so, what do you think are the potential steps that the Court can take to address them? If you don't agree, why not?

Regarding your proposal for court clerks, do you believe anyone will actually be interested in activities such as writing hypothetical briefs? Can you cite any example in TNP or any other region where a project involving working on hypothetical scenarios had been successful? As for writing law guides, this has been an idea proposed by several people in the past. Why do you believe it hasn't been done and what will you do differently to get it moving?
I have taken some time to brush up on the facts of the cases Pallaith mentioned that make our justice system "a sham and an international joke" in his words, and I have to agree on principle that overturning a guilty verdict and declaring the defendant not guilty because the prosecution didn't enter the legally binding oath, which is open to the public, into Court-approved evidence logs is ridiculous. Not only that, creating a byzantine, rules-based legal system in which the defence is able to help their clients escape a guilty verdict by playing a game of legal technicalities, and not debating the merits of the case itself, benefits only a few lawyers who have trained to play that game at the expense of the rest of the Court who are neither trained nor have the patience and experience to do so. The principal measures the Court can undertake to address these issues would be to reform trial procedures and disincentivise the defence from drumming up legal technicalities that would undermine the delivery of justice. I wouldn't go so far as to advocate the wholesale dissolution and replacement of the current system, however.

From my brief time as a Court clerk before I was elected Delegate, the program had a strong start and there was much interest among the clerks to author hypothetical briefs, some of which were even officially submitted in R4Rs after some polish. It has been a while since then, but it does demonstrate that there is interest in our region to learn more about our legal system. It is critical, however, that such interest is nurtured through attention and care, not left to wither through inactivity. Too often the Court has fallen into inactivity and left its clerk program and other business unfinished term after term because the justices have no trials to conduct or R4Rs to review and they get bored. In those times, even amusing themselves and the clerks with hypothetical questions or cases of the week would have helped maintain interest and activity. I am not aware of any examples of such a program succeeding in other regions, mostly because I am currently involved in frontiers which have a vastly more underdeveloped legal system than ours, but I don't see why we need to restrict our imagination to what is currently working rather than what is possible. If the Court manages to revive the clerk program and have it run smoothly again then we are already setting an example for others to follow.

From my experience writing guides (I wrote a basic R/D guide for NPA soldiers as MoD), failure to finish guides usually stems from the fact that there is a lack of interest and commitment in seeing it through. Either the writers are busy with their other duties (IRL or NS), or they have no interest in continuing, or they feel overwhelmed by the workload and don't think it's worth it to spend hours on guides when that time can be better used elsewhere. Thankfully, these problems can be solved by strong, active, and systematic managers who can (and should) plan ahead with clear goals and milestones to accomplish, encourage people to work towards making achievable progress, and never stop to motivate them every step of the way. One example I can think of is working on a guide for the Bill of Rights, which contains only 11 articles in total and within each are detailed fundamental rights with important consequences for the region.
 
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