[PASSED] Hands-On in a Pinch Act

Pallaith

Pallaith

TNPer
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As promised, should the Court decision not go the way I'd like, this should cover the aftermath.

Hands-On in a Pinch Act:
1. Section 7.5 of the Legal Code will be amended as follows:
Section 7.5: Mandatory Ministries:
41. There will be an Executive Officer charged with the North Pacific's foreign affairs. They will ensure the continued operation of any embassies of the North Pacific and will report on events in the region.
42. There will be an Executive Officer charged with military affairs. They will carry out such legal missions as are authorized by the Delegate, expressly or categorically.
43. There will be at least one Executive Officer charged with focusing primarily on matters of internal interest to The North Pacific.
44. For the purposes of this section, the Delegate may serve as one of the Executive Officers charged with any of the preceding duties. The Regional Assembly shall approve the Delegate serving as more than one of the Executive Officers charged with any of the preceding duties by majority vote.
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Simply put, this codifies the right of the Delegate to serve as a mandatory minister. Because this is apparently such a crazy idea for some of you, I went ahead and placed a limit on its use. So even this bill would not allow for a one-man band scenario, though if the RA permits it, it could happen. I see that as highly unlikely though considering I have only seen a Delegate serve in one of these ministries while Delegate twice in my nearly decade in TNP, and it was only ever one ministry at a time. Delegates do not enjoy having to take these roles on, it is not gonna happen regularly (at least, I hope this isn't the beginning of a trend due to a talent crunch, anyway). I see no reason why in lean times we should make our lives harder and encourage the appointment of empty suits, but if the Court is going to once again put us in a bind, better we prepare ahead of time I think.
 
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How dare you come up with a reasonable solution to an issue someone has pointed out and also depriving me of a frankly quite boring talking point given that I've said it approximately 4,000 times over the years.

Full support. And exile. Twice.
 
Please reword the second sentence from "may" to "shall."

This proposal follows the insidious trend of expanding the powers of the Delegate. I am continually amazed at the RA's willingness to have it's own power eroded. Is it going to take a nasty dictator to wake us up and restore the balance of power?

Against.
 
Great Bights Mum:
Please reword the second sentence from "may" to "shall."

This proposal follows the insidious trend of expanding the powers of the Delegate. I am continually amazed at the RA's willingness to have it's own power eroded. Is it going to take a nasty dictator to wake us up and restore the balance of power?

Against.
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I’m not following this alarm you seem to have about this. The delegate picks the members of cabinet, not the RA. The RA isn’t giving up anything. If you forbid the delegate from appointing himself to one of these ministries, he can put a sock puppet to look pretty and sign the papers and carry on as he would if he appointed himself. I find that scenario more likely when the delegate isn’t inclined to appoint someone due to the choices being lacking. And I think performative acts to satisfy the legal code are not why we have the legal code provisions.

We have an acting delegate with a month to go before an election. He was already doing the job that he is continuing to do. I do not understand what you’re afraid of here.
 
In the past, the rule was that if the Delegate did not fill a mandatory position, the RA had the authority to do it. The law was clear there were to be separate individuals in the roles of delegate and minister. One reason this may not have come up after those clauses were altered, is because it was just understood they were run by different people. Now we have an R4R pending which may very well change what was once a commonly accepted practice.
 
Great Bights Mum:
In the past, the rule was that if the Delegate did not fill a mandatory position, the RA had the authority to do it. The law was clear there were to be separate individuals in the roles of delegate and minister. One reason this may not have come up after those clauses were altered, is because it was just understood they were run by different people. Now we have an R4R pending which may very well change what was once a commonly accepted practice.
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And I suppose this proposal gives us an opportunity to revisit that. The RA itself abandoned the idea of picking ministers when the delegate could not, 13 years ago, so hardly an example of a recent trend of giving up power. This wouldn’t be the first time that something in law was ambiguous because people at the time understood it to mean something people today may not. As the people of today, we get to decide if we still feel the way old players back then did, or if we think this might be a reasonable way to handle this matter.

I have laid out my reasons for why I think this is reasonable. Recent history tells us how rare and clearly unpopular such a move is. Appealing to the possibility of despots only moves me so much because as I said, despots can easily work with either system, and tend not to care too much about what the law says anyway.
 
For what it's worth, I don't agree that the law implicitly forbids the delegate from serving as an executive officer just because it rarely happens. Generally, for a custom like this to be considered legally binding, it has to not be contradicted by an existing law, and there has to be a pretty clear consensus that the custom is not just a norm, but actually required by law.

Given that the last time the delegate also served as an executive officer - which was, itself, harshly criticized, much more so than this time - there weren't any serious legal objections, I think it's pretty clear that there's no legally binding custom here. If anything, we have the opposite - a long-accepted legal principle that anyone can serve in any office unless the law explicitly says otherwise.
 
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Formal debate has ended, as an update, this vote has been scheduled to begin following the conclusion of voting on the "North Pacific Army Unrestricting Amendment."
 
I have voted against this, because I believe that the provision which requires the approval of the Regional Assembly for the delegate to serve in multiple executive officer provisions is unconstitutional. The Constitution allows the delegate to appoint any citizen as an executive officer, and the Legal Code cannot restrain this power by requiring the approval of the Regional Assembly.
 
I don't have a strong opinion on this, because you can always have a delegate who appoints three weaklings and then centralize power, or the other way around and do nothing. In a way because the Delegate is directly elected, the EOs can be pretty strong/weak, not like a parliamentary system where there's some balancing of power among ministers (see all the coups, um spills, in Australia for example)

Comfed:
I have voted against this, because I believe that the provision which requires the approval of the Regional Assembly for the delegate to serve in multiple executive officer provisions is unconstitutional. The Constitution allows the delegate to appoint any citizen as an executive officer, and the Legal Code cannot restrain this power by requiring the approval of the Regional Assembly.
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That would be a fun case if this passes.
 
Comfed:
I have voted against this, because I believe that the provision which requires the approval of the Regional Assembly for the delegate to serve in multiple executive officer provisions is unconstitutional. The Constitution allows the delegate to appoint any citizen as an executive officer, and the Legal Code cannot restrain this power by requiring the approval of the Regional Assembly.
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I believe you are mistaken. The provision in question is this one:

9. The Delegate may appoint executive officers to assist them and may dismiss these officers freely. Executive officers may be regulated by law.

The legal code can restrain this power because the constitution also says they may be regulated by law. Unless it’s your contention that the officers appointed can be regulated but not the appointments themselves, I don’t think you have a winning argument here. If your standard were enough, arguably mandatory ministries would also be unconstitutional.

I would even go so far as to say we frequently include provisions that further regulation and detail are permitted, and count on those further regulations to be outlined. It’s dangerous to require these things to be explicitly mentioned in the constitution. Your argument could undermine the very foundational of how we go about organizing our laws.

If you support the principle of the delegate appointing himself to a mandatory ministry in a pinch then I ask that you support this bill. The provision you object to is fully consistent with the constitution, and serves as a guard rail against over-reliance on this particular possibility. It was put in to accommodate very real concerns some in this assembly had about this scenario, and while I find it to be unlikely and don’t see it occurring, there’s nothing wrong with putting a check against potential excess.
 
Pallaith:
I believe you are mistaken. The provision in question is this one:

9. The Delegate may appoint executive officers to assist them and may dismiss these officers freely. Executive officers may be regulated by law.

The legal code can restrain this power because the constitution also says they may be regulated by law. Unless it’s your contention that the officers appointed can be regulated but not the appointments themselves, I don’t think you have a winning argument here. If your standard were enough, arguably mandatory ministries would also be unconstitutional.
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You are indeed correct that the Constitution allows the law to regulate the appointment of executive officers. I don't think that the meaning of that provision is to allow the RA to regulate the actions of executive officers in office - rather, it allows the appointments themselves to be regulated as you say. The power of the Regional Assembly to regulate the actions of the government is already established by article 2.5 of the Constitution which provides for the general legislative power. In consideration of that, I have changed my vote.
 
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