Debate: Penal Codes

[Sirotnikov]

We haven't yet met those cases, but I'm pretty sure they wil come forth one day.


I think we should discuss and put in writing possible law abuses and expected limits of punishment.

Punishment may range from temporal removal of citizenship to permanent removal of it.

You don't have to be punished for every thing.

A criminal record can be kept, and if a person has, say, 3 sins, only then he is punished.

Ideas are welcome.



Expected crimes: (discuss as well)


Affecting polls, official or not, in an illegal way to misrepresent reality of public opinion.

Creating and employing Double Logins

Abusing power of position to promote a personal goal, against the wishes of the majority / government - treason.

Abusing power in a personal quest against a person or to better a person. Abuse of power. Especially when defaming people.

Misreporting or creating false reports, knowingly about the situation of the game.

Playing the game ahead.

Reloading a game in a case of failure.

Keeping information secret, unlawfully withholding it from the people (we should have a freedom of information law)

[Spiffor]

Good idea Siro

I'd like to list what punitions we can do in our virtual democracy first. The ones I see are :
- forbid someone to name a city
- forbid someone to run for official posts
- impeach someone ho is currently in an official post
- massively ignore someone
- permanetly flame someone whenever we see him on the forum

That's ll I can think of now. We have very few ways to pressure people here, and we won't ask Ming to be our policeman.

As these "punishments" are pretty heavy, I agree with you, we should make a judicial file, and punish people only after they do several sins.

[Kuciwalker]

We should let the mods decide this.

[civman2000]

DLs are punished by the mods, not us, imho

[Jon Shafer]

Clearly, there needs to be some sort of punishment for things. Saying "you're not allowed to do this" but not providing any punishment for when people do do it isn't very intimidating. Whoever comes up with the stuff should talk to the mods/admins about enforcement of some of the things.

[Kuciwalker]

We could have the court decide this stuff.

[Spiffor]

The court has no powers to decide laws, it has power to enforce laws. Thoses who decide laws are us all, when we vote on amendments.
I think we shouldn't bother Ming or MarkG whenever we have something for them to do (they have enough work with the OT already ). But we could ask them to give moderator power to a justice we agree upon.

[Kuciwalker]

To the Supreme Justice.

[Spiffor]

I'd rather say the court agrees on someone who can do this job, and people must agree with an outstanding majority (75 or 80%), so that we can back our beg to Markos for moderator rights.
If only the court decides such an important thing, it's likely Markos refuses. If (almost) the whole forum agrees, he'll probably accept.

[Captain]

No, the court has no power to enforce laws either.

They don't create laws. They only make rulings based on the law. (Except that rulings can be used as precedent, aka common law). Whether those rulings are accepted is different. It is the police and correctional services who enforce the rulings. (Or the military if armed rebels are involved. War crimes tribunals can make rulings but they can't enforce them.)

Since our justices don't have the power to punish so this is a moot point unless they are somehow empowered, and I don't see that happening to the required level for that.

I suppose they could put "reprimands" on file. There's no arbitrary number of strikes for an out, but reprimands can be used as evidence in a "banning" trial.

Personally, I think the Court has enough to do with polls and other disputes that persecuting citizens for minor infractions (of currently non-existant laws) is harmful.

Also, this is the domain of the mods. Most of these are covered by Apoly rules already.

The ONLY ones from that list that I think are worthwhile for us to pursue are the following.

1) Playing ahead and sharing knowledge otherwise unavailable.

2) Maliciously or selfishly acting in a manner so as to disrupt the proper functioning of the nation in accordance with the laws and traditions of this forum.

that would include such things as what you wrote...
Misreporting or creating false reports, knowingly about the situation of the game.
Affecting polls, official or not, in an illegal way to misrepresent reality of public opinion.
...but it might also be too vague.

Note: Minor infractions, where the motivation was not malicious or was clearly out of ignorance, will be considered misdemeanors and no actions will be taken aside from a "reprimand". Serious infractions will warrant action on top of a reprimand. (That action will be at the recommendation of the Court and the discretion of the mods. It will likely be a temporary ban from the forum).

All else shoudn't be bothered with since it is not within our power to enforce and isn't serious enough to warrant pestering the mods about it. IMHO.

[Sheik]

Re: Debate: Penal Codes

Originally posted by Sirotnikov
Keeping information secret, unlawfully withholding it from the people (we should have a freedom of information law)

A freedom of information law would be great. There is no reason to hold info from the people.

[Switch]

Originally posted by Captain
No, the court has no power to enforce laws either.

Not necessarily. This is our game, our country, and if we want the court to be able to enforce laws, only the mods are stopping us. Heck, if we wanted the science advisor to enforce laws, we could let him!

I mean, this IS still a game. We don't want to make this too confusing. Keep it simple. Give the court the power to enforce, I say.

[Jon Shafer]

I agree with Switch. If the Court is only able to make rulings, and not enforce them, then what's the point? Who cares? It would be like some unofficial group making a decision... no one has to listen, and no one has to care. That's not what we want, and not why the Court was created.

[BigRed515]

Currently, there is nothing in the ammendment that created the court about enforcing the laws. There also nothing about NOT enforcing laws, either. It seems to me that one fo the first cases brought before the court should be whether or not the court can enforce laws.

If the court decides it can enforce (which I hope it does), then we should press the Mods as citizens bound by the decisions of the court to give the court, or whomever it deems should be the enforce, mod powers.

[Togas]

Regarding enforcement: There is no debate that The Court's rulings carry with it the power of an official mandate from the people -- the people created The Court and it acts on behalf of the people and the Constitution. The Court is empowered make rulings. We did not, however, give The Court police powers/enforcement powers.

In the U.S. (as in many other nations) The Court makes a ruling or order, but it is for the police or prison system to enforce -- carry out the order.

In our system, if a Penal Code were created, The Court would determine if a law was broken, order the applicable punishment, and leave it up to a Mod or other person to actually carry it through. Thereby The Court does not physically enforce the order, but the order is definately enforceable.

Back on topic -- We should be warry in the creation of a Penal Code. We do not need to see this game degenerate into witch-hunts or the like, and we are well equipped to deal with most problems that arise without using a complicated legal process.

If we do make a code of laws, they should be only for the most dangerous sorts of problems ... things that harm the game or other players. Each law created must have the punishment range stated in it, and we would then want to have a trusted person to prosecute (or choose not to prosecute) crimes against the nation.

If we do end up going this route (and I'm still not sure that we should), I'll assist with the language. I work in Criminal Law and it's god-awefully complex stuff. Whatever we make needs to be straightforward yet flexible enough to be justice in each individual case.

--Togas