Discussion thread for Case 4

[notyoueither]

Greetings from the Court.

On September 1 of this year a turn chat was conducted under President MrWhereItsAt with many citizens and officials in attendance. During that turn chat peace was made with France. That peace, the timing of it, and the results of it became an issue of contention.

Foreign Advisor Togas filed a complaint with the Court. Normally, the Court would collect that complaint, confer with the person or people named in that complaint and the complainant, examine the issue and decide whether to accept or reject that complaint as a case. Once 3 of the 5 justices agreed to accept or reject a complaint, the senior justice would post in the case thread with the initial particulars of that case and proceed to establish a hearing.

In Case 4, President MrWhereItsAt immediately sought to cooperate with the Court and Foreign Advisor Togas in finding a settlement. This was welcomed by Foreign Advisor Togas and myself as senior justice in the case. However, much remained to be accomplished.

One of the first things to happen was the Court as a whole would have to accept or reject the complaint. With the agreement of the Court and both parties it was decided to delay making a case post prior to either an agreement being finalised, or a lack of agreement made a case thread necessary. An agreement was reached, the results of which have been posted in the Court thread.

Comment and questions in the Court thread would not be appropriate. The purpose of this thread is for all of the citizens of Apolytonia to make comments and ask questions. It is fundamental to the nature of the nation that the public be allowed to see and to comment on any important issue. Here is the place.

As senior justice for this case, I will do my best to answer any questions and to address any comment as may be appropriate for me to respond to in this thread.

[GePap]

First question: The actual problem was diplomatically, but not clearly laid out, so let me get it straight; the actual peace deal achieved did not confirm with the orders given before the chat by Minsiter Togas, is that correct? If not, I would appriciate a nice laying out of the arguments, or to be pointed to the thread they are.

Second Does the CoL state that the President MUST follow the orders of Ministers, or is the President able to take independent action if they view a different set of actions as preferable? I have never seen it made clear whether ministers simply advise or if the Ministers actually have final authority in the areas they are assigned?

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by GePap
First question: The actual problem was diplomatically, but not clearly laid out, so let me get it straight; the actual peace deal achieved did not confirm with the orders given before the chat by Minsiter Togas, is that correct? If not, I would appriciate a nice laying out of the arguments, or to be pointed to the thread they are.

Correct re the orders. President MrWhereItsAt never disputed the orders of Foreign Advisor Togas.

See this thread for some of the discussion around the issue:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=60673

Second Does the CoL state that the President MUST follow the orders of Ministers, or is the President able to take independent action if they view a different set of actions as preferable? I have never seen it made clear whether ministers simply advise or if the Ministers actually have final authority in the areas they are assigned?

This has not been argued in this case. However, the court did refer to Article I. The Executive branch is made up of the President and Vice President. These two are required to abide by the suggestions of the ministers, who represent the will of the people.

[WhiteBandit]

We should have clearified that I think, since being required to "abide" by "suggestions" would make them orders. In fact, that would actually be something worth taking to court since our CoL appears to offer a contrasting opinion. (I guess they'd have to rule on the intent though)

Hmm, well I'm spamming this thread I suppose, I shall stop.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

"Suggestion" and "order" are two different things, the entire concept of "suggestion" is that it is advice that you can act on or ignore. But then we say "must abide by" so basicaly we're saying "you have to do what you can do if you want to or not if you don't but you absolutely have to." Which was poorly worded, if the Executive branch has to abide by the Ministers wishes then they are not suggestions.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Togas gave very specific orders for peace which required other Ministers to issue specific orders and those other Ministers didn't order the orders hat Togas wanted them to which made Togas orders incapable of being carried out because they had left no room for alternate possibilities.

Once again, I may be wrong because I have only seen what was posted here and there in the threads, but I was of the opinion that the fault lied with Togas for not having orders that took into account differing outcomes. And MWIA had to make a call or risk the utter destruction of our military and the subsequent loss of all conquered French terrritory.

[Togas]

Originally posted by GhengisFarb
Once again, I may be wrong because I have only seen what was posted here and there in the threads, but I was of the opinion that the fault lied with Togas for not having orders that took into account differing outcomes. And MWIA had to make a call or risk the utter destruction of our military and the subsequent loss of all conquered French terrritory.

Ghengis, you don't know the full story, but I'm not going to waste any further text on it because it's irrelevant at this point and I have a great deal of respect for GhengisFarb.

The details are behind us. The overwhelming question of importance has to do with who has the legal authority to make what decisions. We looked at the law and discussed it and came to the same conclusion about how to interpret the rules.

I think people assume that The President has final say or some sort of emergency veto power, but (in my opinion -- this was never officially stated by The Court) there is absolutely nothing in the CoL that gives him that power. The President is, for the most part, there to simply operate the game in the mannor we tell him to.

We learned from this experience and moved on. I adjusted my order format after this incident and include language in my orders now (that legalistic italics stuff at the bottom of all my orders) so that if something like this happened again, the President could make the necessary changes.

There were a lot of other isues that could have been asked and debated, and this matter may once again haunt us. My hope is that it will be better addresesed in Constitution v2.0.

--Togas

[Aggie]

Yah, issues like these are the reason that the new COL will be better. Now that we have more experience, we know what issues to address etc, and thus the laws and our nation will be stronger for this. This is a question for the people fron civfanatics game. Did you ever have such issues comes up or are we just so smart that we come up with new problems, as they say nothing is fool proof because fools are so ingenious.
Aggie

[DAVOUT]

Smartness of Apolitonians is incommensurable with any other smartness in the known world, and even beyond.

[=OttomusCeasar=]

So what exactly is the issue?

[WhiteBandit]

Originally posted by Togas
I think people assume that The President has final say or some sort of emergency veto power, but (in my opinion -- this was never officially stated by The Court) there is absolutely nothing in the CoL that gives him that power. The President is, for the most part, there to simply operate the game in the mannor we tell him to.

This is what I have an issue with. I think the President SHOULD have that option, especially in the case of turn threads. What is the point of being a President then? If that is indeed what the President is, I think it is the least fun position in the game. All you are is a sheep, carrying out moves that you've been "ordered" to do. Why do we even need a President then, most of us can carry out our own moves by ourselves. If the only reason to have a President is to post election threads and carry out orders to the "T", then we might as well change his name to "Honorable Secretary," let him do the maintenance tasks and we can play the game ourselves. Sounds like a real prestigious position to me.

I'm not saying the President has the right to go and purposely screw up orders, but since he is the one playing the game (and if it's a turnthread, no one else is there with him), I think he should have some leeway in how he operates, allowing him to make decisions that are in the best interests of the country.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Originally posted by Togas
Ghengis, you don't know the full story, but I'm not going to waste any further text on it because it's irrelevant at this point and I have a great deal of respect for GhengisFarb.

I never claimed to know the full story and stated that my observations were based on second hand (and most likely biased, as at that point many individuals emotions were running high) information in the report thread.

I was simply hoping the individuals concerned would explain what the situation was, as it seems highly unlike you to not cover all options.

However, it sounds like the situation was resolved and I'm somewhat confused over why the subject has been opened up if it has.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by GhengisFarb
However, it sounds like the situation was resolved and I'm somewhat confused over why the subject has been opened up if it has.

There was a complaint filed with the court. That complaint had to be addressed. There had to be a post in the court thread. Some people were bound to have questions and or comments. Since the court thread is not an appropriate place for that, I started this thread.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Hopefully final resolution here.

Togas has already posted, I think I should too, and then it is over. Any further queries should be done in a personal, not Judiciary, fashion. In other words, PM me.

I made a decision contrary to the FAM's orders the day of that turnchat. When I was informed, I instantly regretted it. I have offered as much cooperation with the FAM's wishes as I can, and I hope I have fulfilled and will continue to fulfill any obligations asked of me.

All blame for the misunderstanding should be placed on MY shoulders, for lack of organisation. Such an event has been (I believe) prevented for the future by the creation of orders threads, and more importantly, by the compilation of orders into turn-by-turn accounts.

There has been no further discussion on this for a while, so I consider (unless addressed privately) this matter to be a CASE CLOSED.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
All blame for the misunderstanding should be placed on MY shoulders, for lack of organisation. Such an event has been (I believe) prevented for the future by the creation of orders threads, and more importantly, by the compilation of orders into turn-by-turn accounts.

Not so, Boss.

We had agreed that I was in charge of the organizing for our administration. The fault for the lack thereof lies with me and my preoccupation with the directory at that time.

We did take many steps to prevent this from happening, however, including the structuring of the orders, and the compilation that began as a result of this (man, that is really nice if you are the one playing...or playing along...). We goofed, we learned, we improved. Such is the nature of things.

[adaMada]

My fault partially too. (I won't go letting UnOrthO and MWIA take all the glory )

I knew that this issue was at hand, knew that most citizens assumed that it was in the orders. I assumed, however, that it would be handled, even though I knew I should have posted an explicit reminder that the plan wasn't in the current Foreign Ministry orders (at the time, it seemed important for some reason, but I never got around to it) -- if I'd posted, it probably would have been averted. Finally, I'd told Togas I was going to make the chat, but had network troubles and didn't. If I'd been there, again, it would have been averted.

Let's face it, everything went wrong . It's no one person's fault -- a group of people, each making independent decisions, happened to make the decisions that led to this. It is sad that this happened, but I think we've successfully moved on, and come up with a better system for dealing with orders in the process.

I'd like to further say that I'm very impressed with both Togas' and MWIA's handling of the situation. For them to be able to come together and work the problem out is a testament to the quality of this administration.

-- adaMada