Term 4 - Office of the Judiciary - Fanatikan Law and Order

[Veera Anlai]

Office of the Judiciary - Term 4

This is the official thread for the Term 4 Judiciary Department. You can use this thread to post requests for Judicial Reviews, requests for Public Investigations, or to simply have questions answered about the rules, how they work, and what the Judiciary's positions are on the legality of various issues.
Note that if you wish to post a Public Investigation, please use the proper procedure as described in Section H of our Code of Standards.


The following is a list of referenced posts and links:
Term 3 Official Judiciary Thread
Judicial Log
Constitution of Fanatika (The Three Books)


Our current judiciary members are as follows:
Chief Justice - Veera Anlai
Public Defender - Shaitan
Judge Advocate - Naervod


In accordance with Article I of our Constitution, the current census is as follows:
Term 4 Active Census - 32
Term 4 Quorum Level - 16
Term 4 Full Census - 38

The active census (32) and quorum (16) are numbers normally used in polling for all issues from the simple up to, and including, changes to our Code of Laws.
The Full Census (38) is only used for constitutional amendments. To pass a constitutional amendment, half of the full census (19) must approve the measure, along with a 2/3 approval in the Senate.

The duties and responsibilities of the Judiciary are outlined in Section E of our Code of Laws.

And most important of all, our Judiciary exists to help our citizens avoid and resolve conflicts. If you ever have any legal questions, please feel free to ask, and don't hesitate to discuss any issues with us.

Veera Anlai
Chief Justice
(Do these robes make me look fat?)

 

[Octavian X]

Congratulations, Veera. I hope you like the bench.

By the way, if there are any doughnuts lying around the office, there probably mine...

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

Congratulations Veera!

 

[GenMarshall]

Congrats Veera

 

[Veera Anlai]

It seems that we already have our first Public Investigation of the new term. And I was somewhat hoping for a quiet first day to move into my new office
This message was submitted to me by Disorganizer in a PM, but he did not request this case to be done anonymously.

I, Sir disorganizer of TSort, herewith request a official investigation of the issue which will maybe soon be know as the shortest TTP (time-to-PI) for any president we ever had."

What happened
Eklektikos changed the chat-time on saturday, 22:00 GMT to be at sunday 00:15.

Not only that he violated the chat-schedule paragraph of our rules, which explicitly stated the chat-times to be posted on sundays(!) for the FOLLOWING week (meaning earliest scheduled time for chat=monday!), he also posted this at a time when the elections were still going (22:05GMT).
This lead to some people not being able to participate at the beginning of the chat, because not all of us lurk around the forum hours before the actual chat.

Violated Paragraphs
COS
I.1:The President will post a fixed schedule of game times.
A) Example: 23:00 GMT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
B) This schedule may be updated each Sunday for the following week’s games.
C) If not updated, the existing schedule carries over week to week.

Evidence
Can be found at the chatlog and every term3-governmental thread

I will notify Shaitan, our Public Defender, of the charges, and will notify the future Judge Advocate as soon as he is appointed by our President. A new Judge Advocate should be appointed soon, and he will create the PI thread as well as notify the defendant of the charges against him.
Please refrain from discussion on the PI until the thread is started.

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

Have fun Veera!

 

[disorganizer]

just one addition i forgot: the chat was originally scheduled at sunday-03:00GMT... i dont know whether it matters though... but just to be complete.

so the chat was announced/changed only 2h before it actually took place.

 

[Civanator]

jeese. this game isn't fun anymore. Pi here, PI there. next thing ya know, everyone in the demogame will have a PI or two. this is more like a totalitarianism.

 

[naervod]

it looks like Eklektikos will apoint the person to prosecute him.

 

[Veera Anlai]

Due to the absence of a Judge Advocate that will most likely continue overnight, I'll use my right in CoL.E.3.A to take over the duties of the Judge Advocate until one is appointed.
The PI thread has been posted and is located here.

 

[Eklektikos]

Naervod has been confirmed as the Term 4 Judge Advocate by this council vote.

 

[Shaitan]

Welcome aboard, naervod.

I'd like to point one thing out before you get started. There is a common misconception that the JA is a prosecutor in all PI's. That is incorrect. The JA is responsible for the mechanics of the PI but only functions as a prosecutor when the accusor wishes to remain anonymous.

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

I request that the Judiciary vote for immediate dismissal of the PI against our President.

By legal definition, the President was following the instructions of the Judiciary when he took the turn chat action. Therefore, it would be impossible for him to violate the law as long as he stayed within the umbrella of that legal review.

I think that the Judiciary should act immediately on this, as discussion is not appropriate given that no laws were violated.

 

[disorganizer]

who sais that no laws were violated? you? you also authorized eklektikos to do what he did... as if i remember right... and i posted evidence that it was a very strange interpretation of the laws... and show me the paragraph of the law stating that a judical review is binding... if the review is wrong, and laws are broken because of the law, then the law-breaker has no chance to be not-guilty. he maybe not-punished because of the review, but nevertheless he would be guilty of violating the law.

 

[Cyc]

Dis, I think Bill means binding in a protective way. Actions taken under the authority of a Judicial review or ruling have the High Courts backing or clout or juice, whatever you want to call it. The review or ruling can be appealed or questioned later to find out if it was in deed copesetic (sp?) in dealing with the Law. But I believe any actions taken under this "umbrella" as Bill puts it, can only be reversed, not used as a means to condemn a man.

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

exactly Cyc.

 

[disorganizer]

Well, the judical review even wasnt posted at the log... so how could anyone except eklektikos and the judicacy haveknown it?
Is a review official if its only hidden in the judical thread?
Do us citizens have to subscribe to all those government threads now to prevent such misinterpretations in the future?

*sigh*

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

The review was in the judicial thread. I posted the instructions and results widely.

You only had need to check the turn chat instruction thread for that chat, or the judiciary thread, or the Presidents thread to find it. Those seemed to me to be the best places to put the data for a short term decision.

I am not sure what the challenge was in finding it, but I am certainly sorry that you encountered such hardship.

 

[Shaitan]

The Judicial Log is a permanent repository for the Judicial Clarifications. Those are official once they are decided in the Judicial thread. The log is simply so they don't get lost or forgotten.

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

Further, a review decision of that nature may not need to be logged, as our decision applied to the specific instance of the prior prez scheduling a turn chat (inadvertantly) into the rightful place of the next Prez.

I know Shaitan disagrees with my view on that, but I felt the scheduled chat was not binding. Not because we didn't have laws that covered this, but because the laws regarding our terms of office and rights and responsibilities should, and did, override the farcical turn chat ceromony standards.