Term 4 Judiciary part 2-Monster Overdrive

ravensfire said:

have some questions about filling Vacant positions.

1) Is there a required place for the office filling the position to post that they are looking for candidates?

2) Must the office filling the position wait 72 hours after that request to fill the office, or may someone be appointed before that time period?

3) If only one citizen applies during that 72 hour period, must the office filling the position appoint that citizen?

Section 8.C of the Code of Laws.

Thanks,
-- Ravensfire

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Section 8.C has several subsections wherein different vacancies are handled differently.

1) Only subsections III, IV and V (dealing with cabinet, gubernatorial and judicial vacancies respectively) require the President or Governor's Council to request that interest citizens contact him, her or them. The place to post the request is not specified therefore the President or Governor's Council may choose where to place the post as long as it is in a public CivFanatic forum devoted to this demogame.

2) Again, only subsections III, IV and V (dealing with cabinet, gubernatorial and judicial vacancies respectively) mention a 72 hour period. It must be assumed that this period was included to give citizens ample time to respond to the required request. Therefore, the President or Governor's Council does indeed have to wait for the 72 hour period to elapse before making an appointment.

3) Again, only subsections III, IV and V (dealing with cabinet, gubernatorial and judicial vacancies respectively) are affected. It must be assumed that the reason for calling for interested citizens to apply for vacant positions is to create a poll from which to make the appointment. It therefore follows that if only one citizen applies within the required time frame then he or she must be appointed.

This interpretation does not really tie the hands of the President or Governor's Council. If the appointing officer(s) have someone in mind that they would like to appoint to a vacant office all they have to do is ask the prosepective appointee to declare interest in the job. It would be best if this interest was expressed publicly. SO while it is not mandatory given the law as currently written, it is a good idea for the call for interested citizens to be made in a thread devoted to filling the office in question. Furthermore, it would be best if all interested citizens posted their interest in the office publicly. This way the filling of cabinet, gubernatorial and judicial positions via appointment would be similar to our established nomination process. We allow a fixed amount of time for nominations, nominations are public and in a thread devoted to a single office and the nominee must publicly accept the nomination before being placed on the ballot. Section 8.C merely requires a similar process for appointing citizens to vacant offices.

donsig
Public Defender

Element D of the proposed amendment states A simple majority of the house must be achieved for an amendment to pass. The proposed amendment further defines the house as The highest vote total of these elections shall constitute a full census (the House).

Article C.4 (bullet number 2) of our constitution states No decision shall require more support than an amendment to the Constitution. Article G.2 of our constitution states The Constitution may be amended by a 60% majority of votes cast in a public poll which shall be open for no fewer than 4 days.

Using the recent elections, the full census would be 32 (number of votes cast in the CJ election which drew the most votes). A CoL amendment would therefore require 17 affirmative votes to pass. By contrast a constitutional amendment requires a 60% majority of those voting in the amendment ratification poll. If only ten citizens voted in such a poll then six affirmative votes would be enough to pass the constitutional amendment. By tying the ratification of CoL amendments to the census it is quite possible that more support (as measured by the number of citizens voting for an amendment) would be required for the CoL amendment than for a constitutional amendment. I dare speculate that it is not only possible but likely to happen.

Viewed from another angle, let us look at a hypothetical ratification poll for a CoL amendment under the proposed amendment. For the hypothetical amendment to pass it must get at least a fixed number of affirmative votes, namely one half of the full census plus one (rounded down). Let us call this number X. Therefore any ratification poll that closes with less than X total votes would not be ratified even if all voters voted in the affirmative. By contrast, constitutional amendments that garner less than X total votes would pass as long as a sixty percent majority of those voting in the poll vote in the affirmative. In these cases, the CoL amendment requires more support than a constitutional amendment.

Therefore, I find Element D of the proposed amendment to be in conflict with article C.4 of our constitution and is therefore ineligible to be brought before the assembly for ratification.

donsig
Public Defender

donsig said:

Therefore, I find Element D of the proposed amendment to be in conflict with article C.4 of our constitution and is therefore ineligible to be brought before the assembly for ratification.

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I pointed that out in the discussion thread, and apparently didn't get any action on the comment. Oh well, you can lead a horse to water but you still can't force it to drink.

Please clarify, I would have thought you would say "and therefore the entire amendment is ineligible ...". Did you really mean the amendment could go in without Element D, as the wording of your ruling suggests?

DaveShack said:

I pointed that out in the discussion thread, and apparently didn't get any action on the comment. Oh well, you can lead a horse to water but you still can't force it to drink.

Please clarify, I would have thought you would say "and therefore the entire amendment is ineligible ...". Did you really mean the amendment could go in without Element D, as the wording of your ruling suggests?

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No, I certainly did not mean to suggest that the amendment without Element D could be submitted. When amendments are presented to the judiciary for review the judiciary can only give a yes or no to the conflict question. While the judiciary can point out the conflicts and even suggest possible remedies the judiciary cannot choose to accept part of a proposed amendment. If someone wants to submit a new review for this without element D the process needs to begin anew. I would like to state here that I had neither time nor desire to check for further conflicts once I found one. So merely resubmitting the proposal with out Element D or with a changed Element D does not guarantee more conflicts will not be found.

Anyone wanting a judicial rewview on my interpretation is asked to submit it to next term's court.

Hey everyone, i just want to aplogies for not finishing last terms JR, my internet has gone away so i couldnt.