Amendment II: Apolytonian Court - Idea Compilation

[jdjdjd]

Originally posted by Trip
So do you suggest they serve permanent terms?

I know I have probably worn this out, but why not? This removes them from outside influences, or mking popular decisions simply to re-elected. The court needs to be the protector of the constitution and the democracy, that is it. We control their power by making them only rule on cases presented to them involving constitutional interpretation and also involved in impeachment. You also limit their ability to post on threads where they may exert political influence over a party or a people. Why do we make them leave a party, so they know this is serious and they no longer owe anything to that party or visa-versa. The people on the court need to be serious about serving. You also allow the people/ministers/court...someone...to have power to impeach a judge(s) similar to any other official.

[jdjdjd]

Originally posted by disorganizer
Why not the following:
Let the citizenry elect the judges. A judge will stay there live-long until he resigns (immediate election for his replacement is held) or the court is disbanded.

Originally posted by disorganizer
Disbanding the court is done by a simple citizen poll. This should be set up by ANY citizen and should be up for 5 days. If it is accepted, the court COMPLETELY leaves office, but all judges can be reelected on the following full-reelection of the court.

I prefer impeachment as mentioned previously. If we go with this idea, however, to disband the court at least should require a 2/3's majority of the populace.

Originally posted by disorganizer
We should also deny any political activity (party or group membership as well as holding an office) for any of the judges, just to enforce their impartiallity.
Meaning: No member of a party or a citizen-group and no official position holder can be nominated for judge, as well as no judge can be nominated for any official position.

or at least make them leave office after elected

[Sheik]

Sir Ralph I think what Trip means by that is that it takes both the government and the people to remove an official from office. In other words neither the government or the people can do it alone.

Trip that section that Sir Ralph posted above needs re-wording but I am not sure how it could be re-worded maybe something like:

A judge may be removed from his office by a 51% vote amongst the ministers and then a 2/3 vote amongst the people.

In turn, the court may impeach a minister with a 75% vote within the court, and a 51% amongst the people (as opposed to only a 2/3 vote amongst the people

Again this is a problem. Can the court impeach a minister by itself?

Can the people impeach a minister by themselves?

If not then that statement would contradict what the constitution already says:

All members of our great nation are recognized the right to bring foreword the issue of impeachment of any government official at any time. Resignations will be handled the same as any impeachments.

A poll will be posted which will expire in no less than 5 days. There are to be three poll options, yea, nay, and abstain. Upon the expiration of the poll, if 2/3 of the people who voted deem impeachment necessary, then the official shall be immediately removed from office. The President shall establish an emergency member to take his/her place until a new election can be held, and a new person voted into office to finish the term.

I would suggest that this new admendment either reads:

With the passing of this admendment the court is the only body that has the right to bring forward a case of impeachment . The impeachment of the official in question will then be decided by the people. The Official is impeached with a 2/3 vote.

OR

The Court can impeach an official by itself with a 75% vote. This does not change the ability of the poeple to also impeach officials with a 2/3 vote.

OR

The court has no powers of impeachment and only the people can impeach an official with 2/3 vote.

-------------

Trip this may be what you mean by the above and maybe I just wasted all this time.

[jdjdjd]

Originally posted by mtgillespie


This is a waste of time. So someone is in a party, they resign, and that immediately changes their views? As long as we can remove judges who become radical, there is no problem with them belonging to a party. No-one is completely a-political, whether they belong to a party or not, and we should notpretend that this is the case. We should accept that people are political, and have judges from a spectrum of political views. How about this instead :-

There shall never be more than 2 judges from any one political party. Party membership is considered to continue for one month after resignation. There must always be one independant judge at all times.

That will probably need a lot of changing, but you get the basic idea.

Not that we think that they will become apolitical by leaving a party, its that they should not influence party politics or party politics should not influence them. It is a gesture of commitment to the protection of the constitution above all else. Their views will be their views, some will be strict interpretationists, others not, etc., but they must speak their mind and interpret unmarred by politics and outside influences. In this case the court is not so much as a protector of the majority, but a protector of the constitution.....

So its just a gesture of commitment to be apolitical and judge a case on its merits.

[Sheik]

Originally posted by disorganizer

Why not the following:
Let the citizenry elect the judges. A judge will stay there live-long until he resigns.

We should get new people into office. Why not give more citizens the ability to participate in government?

Originally posted by disorganizer

We should also deny any political activity (party or group membership as well as holding an office) for any of the judges, just to enforce their impartiallity.
Meaning: No member of a party or a citizen-group and no official position holder can be nominated for judge, as well as no judge can be nominated for any official position.

Everyone has political opinions. We should let anyone in the court. I don't think that the people of Apolyton really have grudges or hatred towards any other party and therefore it doesn't matter if we have UFC judges ruling on DIA members or have DIA judges ruling on UFC members. I don't think party politics is a huge problem in Apolyton.

[jdjdjd]

Originally posted by Sheik
The government cant have the power to impeach judges because the court has the power to impeach other government officilas right? You can't have two groups with the power to impeach each other and still keep the system running properly.

Impeachment should probably be the same across all branches, a 2/3 majority of the people is probably what is needed at all to bring the case, and then the court ruling on the cases merits. If its a judge then the remaining judge's must review the case, and 2/3's of them should have to vote in favor (4 out of 5, or in the case of trying a judge, 3 out of the remaining 4). You can plug the ministers in their as well, perhaps they need a simple majority to present the case to the people and the people need 2/3 to say yes the action is warranted and then the court needs 2/3 for final approval.

[jdjdjd]

Perhaps, impeachment of all officials needs to have a new separate amendment to clarify, once the court is set.

[Sheik]

jdjdjd I think you are right we need a seperate amendment to deal with impeachment. I would go for something like:

Anyone can be impeached by the people with 2/3 vote and anyone can bring a case for the impeachment of another.

I don't know if that would cause problems or not but this way the people have full control at all times of who is in office.

[jdjdjd]

Impeachment is serious, your taking ou tof office someone the people voted into office. The people could be the final vote, but someone should review prior to going to the people to make sure this has merits and is not just because of politics, i.e. perhaps UFC and DIA unfying to oust an independent.

[mtgillespie]

Originally posted by jdjdjd


Not that we think that they will become apolitical by leaving a party, its that they should not influence party politics or party politics should not influence them. It is a gesture of commitment to the protection of the constitution above all else. Their views will be their views, some will be strict interpretationists, others not, etc., but they must speak their mind and interpret unmarred by politics and outside influences. In this case the court is not so much as a protector of the majority, but a protector of the constitution.....

So its just a gesture of commitment to be apolitical and judge a case on its merits.

OK, i don't think it's necessary, but i don't have a major problem with it. However, whether in or out of a party, influenced or not influenced, they cannot help but have political leanings, as it is in peoples nature, however fair minded they are. I still think that to acknowledge this, and also to be seen to be fair across the political spectrum, we need some way to ensure we appoint judges from both sides of our political divide (and even some who try to straddle it ).

Do we trust our president to do this (whoever it may be)? At the moment, we seem to be saying that we trust that the right candidates will be put forward. I hope they will, but what if they are not? What if, at the time of elections, one party has a huge majority. the president puts forward a list of like minded people, and the people vote for them. One party could control the ministries and the courts. Should we not at least always have a balanced judiciary?

I realise this is all a bit worst case scenario, i just think we are putting checks and balances into every other bit of legislation, are we doing enough here?

[ThePlagueRat]

Re: Re: Re: Amendment II: Apolytonian Court - Idea Compilation

Originally posted by Trip

What if 3 out of the 5 members of a court decide that "hey, we don't like this one law, let's get rid of it." With 3/5 of the judge already agreeing, the law doesn't have a chance.

Why, and how ? I think the current law of a 66% vote to change a law is consistent and will work just fine to prevent such radical power abuses. (maybe formulated a bit different in the const.)

The court should also go through the whole spaghetti looking for ambiguities and inconsistency. ( There are some few I think, good work otherwise! )

After that, they must also pass 66% votation if the meaning is to be altered in some way by the beuraucratic machinery... In that case, it will work in the essence of democracy anyway!

[ThePlagueRat]

Originally posted by mtgillespie

Do we trust our president to do this (whoever it may be)? At the moment, we seem to be saying that we trust that the right candidates will be put forward.

Yeah, well I think we can trust the current president and his administration. But that's not the problem...

This is to become constitutionalised, and future administrations we know nothing about!

That's the problem. Giving this appointing-power to certain positions, and thereby to unknown individuals, is kinda risky.
We would have all the good old conspiracy theories posted in a while after some elections... It's a beuraucratic weakness!
(and should be dealt with here)

NB: I favour democratic elections, but I was opposed by a majority of voters.

[mtgillespie]

Originally posted by ThePlagueRat



Yeah, well I think we can trust the current president and his administration. But that's not the problem...

This is to become constitutionalised, and future administrations we know nothing about!

That's the problem. Giving this appointing-power to certain positions, and thereby to unknown individuals, is kinda risky.
We would have all the good old conspiracy theories posted in a while after some elections... It's a beuraucratic weakness!
(and should be dealt with here)

NB: I favour democratic elections, but I was opposed by a majority of voters.

Thanks for summing it up much more neatly than i could

[Sheik]

I don't think it is risky to have judges in parties. The Judges will be responsible with power and will try to look at situations without letting their parties feelings get in the way. I like to be optimistic and think that no one will abuse their power. Maybe we could have a way for the judges decision to be over-turned with a 90% vote of the people. Though I think this goes to far. Eventually we are going to have a system where it could take a year to decide if a poll is valid.

Let the judges be appointed and let them do their job. Like mtgillespie says everyone has political opinions. Even independants.

[jdjdjd]

Originally posted by ThePlagueRat



Yeah, well I think we can trust the current president and his administration. But that's not the problem...

This is to become constitutionalised, and future administrations we know nothing about!

That's the problem. Giving this appointing-power to certain positions, and thereby to unknown individuals, is kinda risky.
We would have all the good old conspiracy theories posted in a while after some elections... It's a beuraucratic weakness!
(and should be dealt with here)

NB: I favour democratic elections, but I was opposed by a majority of voters.

Always a risk, democratic elections also have a risk, i.e. that independent candidates don't get the support in posts that party candidates will, and thus we limit candidates to the two parties.

In US any appointment by the president would have to be approved by the Congress, which helps make them choose more balanced nominees....we do not have such a body, however. So long as the major parties stay in balance, then it forces the president to pick someone where he can get a consensus, and this allows for independents to have a fair chance.

I assume the majority is thinking, well we elected this president and these ministers, so we feel they can hanlde the appointment of the judge, but so long as I have impeachment power, then I can kick out anyone who is unfit.

The other thing goes to the many things brought up already about keeping the court indenpendent, i.e. no term limit, impeachment, limiting cases they can hear, leaving party, no posting in election, campaign, or amendment threads, etc.