Aquinas wrote:It is possible to role-play the judicial system, and if necessary to have constitutional laws governing the judicial system enforced by Moderation under the terms set out in section 22 of the
Game Rules.
Generally speaking, it is probably fair to say section 22 could probably be improved/made clearer in some ways, so I'm open to feedback/suggestions about that. Perhaps there are reassurances/clarifications about judicial role-play which could be provided, and would be helpful. So feel free to put forward suggestions.
Our Constitutional Court is used only rarely. I think this recent case was the first one in several hundred IG years. We empower the President to call, and then seat the Court, but the nominations are put up by the Parties according to a formula which rewards the Party of the President, the Party of the Justice Ministry, and the Largest Party that is neither of those two. All Parties with seats in the Assembly also get to name one justice. This way, the court is tied to the election mechanism, but the most active players (assumed, though not guaranteed) are the ones with the most votes on the court.
The reason we ran this through the Court was because the RP rule was unclear as to whether the RP rule or the statue attached to the RP rule takes precedence. Our problem is that a National Service Program is an RP rule predicated on mandatory national service, and people kept changing the mandatory national service statute, while leaving the NSP in place, because they didn't actually RL grow up in Kalistan, and therefore RP their Parties as if their Parties discovered a totalitarian law which needed to be changed, rather than RPing that all of their members went through NSP the same way everyone else did, if they went to college in Kalistan. Basically, they were getting an ephemeral majority together, outlawing National Service, but leaving the gutted NSP bill in place. Then, when they (as they did) lose their majority, the mandatory service law was repassed, and the RP rule was back on. What the Court simply did was say that the proposals attached to RP rules must remain in effect until the RP rule is (by Rule 22) repealed. Then, the statutory proposal can be changed. Essentially it makes the RP rule more like a treaty, but one which is easier to pass and only creates a soft-lock on the statutory proposals.
I would actually hope that the Rule 22 left this question opened, but stated the options clearer. For example: I think it would be up to the country is they think the RP rule would take precedence over a change in legislation. In Kalistan, we did what was right, I think, for the country, with a volume of RP laws attached to it. But I would hope that the Rule 22 would make it clear that soft-locking proposals through RP rules was a realistic possibility.
As for Courts, that itself is an RP thing, and I would say, if a country has established a judicial system which deals with systemic questions (the questions of how the game is played in the country itself) I think a statement that explicitly acknowledges Judicial systems and explicitly states that a RP-rule created judicial system will be enforced by moderation. Perhaps there can be a kind of comment about the official constitution of the judiciary, its role in determining laws, its composition, and so forth. The judiciary in Kalistan is older than the SP, and it is used from time to time, and I would think that a lot of issues within countries that moderation has to deal with now, concerning game play within a country, would be better dealt with by the players themselves using a fair and rigorously constituted judiciary, and that would fall under 22.6.
I am sure others have a judiciary too... I wonder how Kalistan's differs from other countries'.