[R4R] Regarding "On RA Oversight of the North Pacific Armed Forces"

1. What law, government policy, or action (taken by a government official) do you request that the Court review?
Court ruling number 44 (2015), On RA Oversight of the North Pacific Armed Forces.

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?
Chapter 7 of the Legal Code, specifically Section 7.6. The law regarding the Regional Assembly’s oversight of NPA operations and the latter’s reporting requirements to the former has been comprehensively amended by the Regional Assembly over the years since the original ruling. As a result, the ruling relies on outdated provisions contrary to presently existing law, and its imposed reporting requirement is in conflict with the same.

3. Are there any prior rulings of the Court that support your request for review? Which ones, and how?
Court ruling number 41 (2015), On Recognizing Outdated Rulings, establishes the precedent for acknowledging obsolete rulings to be no longer in effect, as a result of subsequent legislation superseding the language that they relied on at the time. This was further reinforced by Court ruling number 72 (2023), On Defunct Rulings, which establishes the ability for the Court to render previous Court rulings defunct as precedent due to subsequent legislation superseding them when targeted by an R4R. The Court has also recently reversed some of its arbitrarily imposed restrictions on the NPA as observed in Court ruling number 84 (2024), On the Reconsideration of the Constraints of the NPA while on Joint Raiding Operations, when it overturned a previous ruling that restricted the NPA’s ability to participate in joint raiding operations.

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.
Standing derives from my position as Court Examiner, as defined in Section 3.6, Clause 25 of the Legal Code: “The Court Examiner will have standing in all cases of judicial review brought before the Court.”

5. Is there a compelling regional interest in resolving your request? If so, explain why it is in the interest of the region as a whole for your request to be decided now.
This ruling relies on legal provisions that no longer exist and imposes a new reporting requirement for the NPA ex nihilo without any constitutional or legal principle or basis, which is a usurpation of the Regional Assembly’s powers to make laws and regulate the NPA, and contrary to the Court’s standing principles against legislating from the bench as expressed in Court ruling number 75 (2023), On Resolving Ambiguity in the Absence of Subordinate Rules for Government Bodies:

As the Constitution is clear that the various government bodies may establish their own rules, this Court believes that to the extent it must weigh in and resolve ambiguities related to the regulation of government bodies, it should do so with careful application of existing constitutional and legal provisions, and settle the question with as little change to the subordinate laws and regulations as possible, particularly if the changes involve drafting entirely new language. The Court is not a legislative or regulatory body, and believes it is always better for the Regional Assembly to settle ambiguities in law itself, and for government bodies to clearly outline their own procedures and address deficiencies with internal amendments wherever possible. Nevertheless, we have many times outlined provisions or rules that can guide government bodies when these guidelines or rules were not in place, and may continue to do so from time to time, but on such occasions the Court must endeavor to tread lightly and only as much as is required by the nature of the ambiguity at the heart of the question it is asked to answer.

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The Regional Assembly has reasserted its authority in this area by ratifying subsequent legislation that expanded and clarified the extent of its oversight over the NPA. It is therefore in the region’s best interests that the ruling is rendered defunct for the sake of consistent law, sound jurisprudence, and continued enforcement of the separation of powers as outlined in the Constitution.

6. Do you have any further information you wish to submit to the Court with your request?
No.

The Court accepts this request for review, and I will serve as the Moderating Justice. The Court does not recognize a respondent.

At this time, the Court will accept briefs from any interested party for a period of five days following this post.

The period for submitting briefs has passed. The court will now deliberate.

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

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

Chapter 7: Executive Government
Section 7.6: The North Pacific Army
43. The North Pacific Army is the military of The North Pacific. The Executive Officer charged with military affairs will endeavor to maintain an active and well trained military, capable of executing both offensive and defensive operations.
44. When deployed in a foreign region, The North Pacific Army will act with respect towards the natives of the region.
45. The Regional Assembly must be informed of all operations undertaken by The North Pacific Army as soon as practicable, unless they are classified by the Delegate or the Executive Officer in charge of the military.
46. The Regional Assembly may declassify an operation by a majority vote.
47. The following are Class A restricted actions:

• changing a region's World Factbook Entry without providing the region with the original content of the World Factbook Entry or a straightforward way to access that content;

48. The following are Class B restricted actions:

• applying a password to a region;
• banning or ejecting nations native to a region;

49. The Delegate or the Executive Officer charged with military affairs shall notify the Regional Assembly of any operation in which a member of the North Pacific Army or any operational partners undertake any restricted action at least 12 hours before the operation is scheduled to begin, unless the Delegate or the Executive Officer charged with military affairs classifies the operation.
50. If notified of an operation in which a member of the North Pacific Army or any operational partners undertake any Class B restricted actions, the Regional Assembly shall immediately debate the use of such restricted actions and will hold a majority vote on whether to permit the use of those actions. The vote must begin two days after the Regional Assembly is notified of the operation.
51. Regions with which The North Pacific is at war are exempt from all restricted actions for the duration of the war. Natives of a region that request that The North Pacific Army perform restricted actions on them, whether independently or as part of a broader agreement, are exempt from those restricted actions.
52. The Regional Assembly may require The North Pacific Army to withdraw from any operation, and impose other requirements to reverse restricted actions it performed on that region during that operation, by majority vote.
53. Nations wishing to join The North Pacific Army must swear the following oath before being enlisted. All military rules that they are pledging to obey must be publicly visible.

By my honor and by my conscience, I will endeavor to honestly and faithfully serve The North Pacific. In peace and in war, I will support and defend The North Pacific and its legal system of government. If I perceive or gain knowledge of activity to overthrow the legal government of the region, I will report it to the Security Council without delay. I promise to act properly and uprightly, to obey the lawful orders of the Delegate and my superiors, to comply with the law and all military rules, and to keep the military secrets trusted in me. Should I be given a position of military leadership, I will endeavor to set a good and encouraging example to my subordinates. When deployed, I will be mindful that my actions reflect on my region, and endeavor to represent The North Pacific with honor and dignity. I swear all this freely and without reservation.

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

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The Court opines the following:

On Standing
The petitioner is the Court Examiner, and enjoys universal standing for all questions before this Court. There is no question of proper standing in this case.

On the Court’s Prior Ruling
The Court Examiner highlights our prior decision regarding oversight of the North Pacific Army as needing reconsideration due to significant changes in the law related to the army since the ruling was originally made. This is an area of law frequently changed, and recently we have overturned a ruling related to the operation of the NPA on the basis that the law was changed with the express intention of countermanding our ruling on that subject. Compared to that change, the law has changed even more regarding the portion this ruling was originally concerned with, that being the portion related to oversight of the NPA. The existing law outlines the standards and expectations for notifying the Regional Assembly and how the Regional Assembly may respond quite clearly, and our prior ruling’s textual analysis certainly does not apply anymore. What remains as true today as it was back then, though, is the prior Court’s argument for why the NPA’s operation at the time was not the impediment to proper oversight. Whether it is more difficult for the Regional Assembly to override deployments based on when it is informed of operations is a matter for the Legal Code to resolve, and efforts were clearly made over the years to do just that. It is not this Court’s place to fill those gaps or to figure out for the Regional Assembly how to exercise its oversight power. And to the extent the Court provided guidance for NPA deployment notification, the Regional Assembly has even codified that guidance. The prior Court outlined concerns with potential ambiguities and encouraged a revision of the Legal Code to account for them, and we feel that they clearly engaged in an effort to account for those ambiguities. Typically when codification of one of our rulings takes place, this Court would see fit to affirm that aspect of the previous ruling. This is not such a case. The Court erred in a fundamental way in providing guidance in the manner it did, and we must acknowledge and address that error.

It is a shame that despite clearly illustrating where areas of clarification and reform were needed for the Regional Assembly’s oversight powers, and acknowledging that the Regional Assembly needed to take action to amend the law accordingly, the Court simultaneously engaged in one of the most blatant instances of legislating from the bench. The Legal Code has since codified the prior Court’s imposition of a 12-hour notice for informing the Regional Assembly of deployments. But there was absolutely no legal basis for imposing this requirement, no connection to any law, no constitutional principle, nothing but the justices at the time deciding it seemed like a good idea and would help improve the oversight mechanism in the law. The Court is not a law-making body, at least not directly. Whenever we impose requirements, definitions, or rules that must be followed, it is always in the service of resolving ambiguities and areas of the law which are poorly-defined or have a variety of potential outcomes. As we have stressed before, especially in our decision On Resolving Ambiguity in the Absence of Subordinate Rules for Government Bodies, guidelines and rules are meant to instruct officials on how to resolve these ambiguities in ways consistent with the law and Constitution. The Court could have outlined a broad range of principles that any NPA law should include to guarantee that oversight could function properly, and built its case on the importance of some form of notice to the RA being necessary for appropriate oversight. The Court at the time was clearly concerned with this, and could have made a strong point about how meaningful the notice given to the RA actually was in practice given the limitations inherent in NS military activity. A specific 12-hour window, on the other hand, is a pure policy choice that is not resolving an ambiguity. It is an especially strange choice given the Court identified other ambiguities which may have been arguably more reasonable for Court guidance, but it chose to explicitly defer those to the Regional Assembly. We do not read the prior Court’s apparent suggestions to be such, given they specifically said that the NPA “shall” take the actions it instructed, and as we have made an effort in recent years to make it very clear when guidance and suggestions are offered as opposed to orders that must be followed, it is clear that a line was crossed in this ruling.

Holding
We find that the following portion of our prior ruling On RA Oversight of the North Pacific Armed Forces is now altered due to a portion of it being defunct as precedent:

The text of the law here is quite clear that every clause here is understood to begin with the phrase "The NPAF must operate so that..." Therefore, it is the opinion of the Court that, per the text of the law, the NPAF must act in such a manner so that it is actually possible for the Regional Assembly to exercise its right under clause C.

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Therefore, the defunct portion of the ruling will be modified with strikethrough tags, acknowledging its obsolescence while preserving it for historical purposes. We hereby overturn the portion of the same ruling establishing procedure for the NPA to disclose operations to the Regional Assembly.