Proposed Constitutional Amendment: Article III, Sewction 6

Modify Article III, Section 6 from

Chairs of the SC will ratify bills passed by the Representative Assembly by simple majority vote and may resubmit the bill with modifications for vote. Hearings and trials not involving government officials will be overseen by a single Professor and judgment will be decided by a jury of peers. All impeachment hearings will be performed in the Philosophic branch by the Chairs without a jury. If a Chair is accused, that Chair will be excused for the duration of the hearing. A member of the branch which is not calling for the impeachment hearing will serve as Leader of the Philosophic branch during the hearing.

to
Any citizen may request that the SC review any bill passed by the RA. The SC has the power to nullify or modify a bill to prevent conflict with the foundational documents. When the SC nullifies or modifies a bill, it shall publish an explanation of why the bill, as presented to it, was in violation of the founding documents

Hearings and trials not involving government officials will be overseen by a single Professor and judgment will be decided by a jury of peers. All impeachment hearings will be performed in the Philosophic branch by the Chairs without a jury. If a Chair is accused, that Chair will be excused for the duration of the hearing. A member of the branch which is not calling for the impeachment hearing will serve as Leader of the Philosophic branch during the hearing.

Explanation:

As it now stands, the SC must affirmatively ratify every bill that comes out of the RA. Since the RA meets weekly and the SC monthly. This can cause a delay in the enactment of all policies.

This amendment would create a presumption of constitutionality rather than making every bill go through a ratification process.

---------------------------------------------------
Comments and thoughts are welcome.

Only that perhaps the SC should nullify only, rather than modify. Shouldn't it be the province of the RA to modify the bill, based on the opinions expressed by the SC?


Sudane

Claude's proposed amendment makes sense to me for the reasons outlined. Also Sudane's observation that the SC exercies its influence predominantly in the capacity of advising on the constitutionality of particular passages of a bill. There is a subtle yet very important difference between a mandate to advise on why a certain clause is not constitutional and a mandate to propose amendments to make it constitutional. The latter requires IMHO a far greater degree of interpretation on behalf of the SC and in the worst case scenario runs the risk of yielding legislative power to a body that is not accountable to the electorate.

I'd just add two things: first, let's set up a time period for the SC to pronounce the bill as invalid, ie., if the SC doesn't say anything in the appointed time, the bill passes. I would suggest 48 hours after the transcript is posted, and have the transcript posted 48 hours after the meeting has finished.

Secondly, the issue of "the SC [...] may resubmit the bill with modifications for vote" has been long misinterpeted as "the SC has the power to approve bills". Actually, any citizen — not only RA members! — can submit bills (or their modifications) for vote (and in certain cases this has even been encouraged). So the SC doesn't get any more "powers" because of that sentence.

In our Constitution, unlike what happens on most representative assemblies in the world, the "power" to submit bills is put in the hands of each and every citizen. The power to "make bills into laws", however, is only in the hands of the democratically elected members of the RA. There is quite a difference!

In a sense, thus, that part of the sentence is redundant and should be deleted.

Mind you, the issue of the SC "gently suggesting" that a certain bill, if slightly modified, will meet the SC's approval, is part of "backstage politics" and will continue to be done But I agree that it shouldn't be suggested in the Constitution... hehe

I am not sure I agree with this change.

If the purpose of the SC is to provide this kind of constitutional oversight to bills passed by the RA as well as to act in an adjudicating judiciary type of role it seems like this one bill would take away a large portion of the powers of the SC at one stroke. While I am not necessarily against that, I do have a problem with qucik changes to central parts of our constitution and founding documents based on the breezy passage of a single bill through the house.

In the US system, there are only two parties and the structure of the government is so monolithic that constitutional change is a incredibly slow and sometimes almost impossible process. In Canda where I live, as with many European countries, the inclusion of third and fourth parties and the fact that the executive branch has less power means that sometimes a party that reflects a very small minority of the public opinion can dominate the house and push through bills making huge changes to the structure of government and the constitution not only possible but rapid.

For that reason, making large changes to the structure of the governmental system or the constitution has typically been viewed as something that requires the participation and agreement of all levels of government and as much of the general population as can possibly arranged, even to the point of referenda on particular points. There is an unwritten concept of "mandate" wherein a particular political party or faction agrees that it does not have the mandate for sweeping constitutional change and seeks to gain consensus through the means noted.

I am certainly not tyring to imply that this is the current state of affairs with the current RA, this is just an example of principle. We *are* engaged in a period wherein it seems ther is a great interest in re-shaping the consittutional basis of Neualtenburg and while the current RA is passing a lot of bills, I must say I generally agree with the majority of them. What I am saying is that I think I have a slight problem with the increasing number and scope of the bills being proposed and fear that we may pass things into law without proper thought and consultation.

The specific problems I have with the wording changes above are as follows:

"Any citizen may request that the SC review any bill passed by the RA. "

- If the SC only reviews on request, it effectively removes their overseeing function and bills could be passed into law simply because the SC was out of town that week. I think this is a poor clause to have in a constitution.

"The SC has the power to nullify or modify a bill to prevent conflict with the foundational documents. When the SC nullifies or modifies a bill, it shall publish an explanation of why the bill, as presented to it, was in violation of the founding documents."

- Taken as worded, this removes the prohibition that the modifications to the bill made by the SC have to be re-approved by the house. It seems to me that taken literally, the SC could take any bill and modify it to read "George Bush is an Idiot." and then approve it as law as long as they publish a documetn saying why they made the change.

I like the idea of the SC having to justify a change that they make and also that they might have to explain themselves as it takes the "star chamber"quality out of their decisions. However as it currently stands they more or less just point out constitutional flaws and "suggest'" revisions that the RA might want to make to the bill in order to make it constitutionaly valid. They don't currently make the changes.

I think something more along the lines of the SC passing a written judgement on why and how they feel the bill is in violation of the constitution or whatever would be best and then simply chucking it back to the RA as they currently do.

I would also point out that while it is difficult for the RA to pass laws now due to the different meeting times of the assemblies, this is a temporary condition due to the fact that so many many bills need to be passed right now. Perhaps we should not change the constitution for temporary reasons.

It seems to me from a relatively newbie point of view that Claude is proposing what would become a rather significant shift in the role of the SC. Currently legislative functions are split between the RA and SC, and this amendment would make the SC much more of a judicial body than a quasi-legislative one.

Moreover, since the RA has only one chamber, the present system allows for a sort of "cooling-off" time period for urgent legislation to be carefully considered. In a bi-cameral system (legislatures of 49 US states), requiring both chambers to approve sometimes results in significant changes to proposed legislation.

I'm also not sure that the proposal would achive Claude's purpose of a "presumption of constititionality" of legislation. One approach might be to amend the constitution to allow the RA to seek an "advisory opinion" from the SC. Again, let me at the risk of being US-centric analogize to the US model: the power to issue such advisory opinions is not allowed to the US Supreme Court by the US constitution, though I believe some state constitutions permit state Supreme Courts to render advisory opinions.

Any citizen means any citizen, including any member of the SC, so I don't feel it removes oversight. It merely makes it ex post facto rather than a priori. Justice Soothsayer has some interesting points on the question of whether the SC is a legislative body. I'll address those in a separate post replying to his.



Good point.

I had never thought of it this way. Seeing the SC as something akin to the House of Lords or French Senate makes the existing setup seem much more sensible. My amendment did see the SC as essentially a judiciary.



If the SC is quasi-legislative, it must meet more than once a month. A cooling off period is fine, but three and a half weeks (the amount of time a bill could sit waiting for the SC to have a meeting) is an eternity in the time frame of SL. A very cautious system is fine once that system is established. Our system, despite it's having been around for more than a year, isn't really established. I could see waiting a week for the SC to do something with a bill, but not a month. Perhaps Gwyneth's suggestion that the SC have a limited amount of time (perhaps more than 48 hours, if they're functioning as the upper house of a bicameral legislature) after the RA passes a bill to block it would give the SC incentive not to let legislation sit.

Perhaps the fact that I lived in Nebraska for four years is showing

Note to those outside the US. Nebraska is the one US state with a unicameral legislature




I think this would be an excellent idea.

I also think the SC might be better off meeting more than once a month but to force the SC to sit on a schedule similar to the RA for the convienience of passing bills quicker is a mistake in my view.

The purpose of the second chamber is "sober second thought," and that cannot be accomplished in a short time frame almost by definition IMO. Consider for example if we were to make the SC meet on the exact same time frame as the RA. If that was the case, then why not even sit in the same room? And if we are sitting in the same room, and discussing the bill in both "houses" simultaneously whats the point of seperate chambers at all?

I know I am kind of reducing things to an absurd situation there, but my point is that IMO the sepearation is a good thing. Seperate rooms at sepearate times, and as separate as is feasible in a functional sense.

I truly think that the only real problem here is that we are in an anomalous situation wherein large amounts of bills are being passed by the RA; where we are going through enormous changes in our constitutional and economic structure. I dont think we should necessarily re-form the government structure in any radical way to deal with it because I don't anticipate that things will always be this way. I also kind of think that when this much change is happening this fast, that is the exact time that "sober second thought" is really needed.

I would suggest two things:

1) - Once a month is a very infrequent schedule in a place like SL, perhaps once every two weeks would be good, but SC meetings should be *less* frequent that RA meetings and as opposite on the schedule as possible.

i.e. - if the RA also meets every two weeks, they should be one week sepearate from the bi-weekly SC meetings. If the RA meets every week, then every second week would correspond to an SC meeting and *that* would be an opportunity to "rush through legislation" that was essential. In that way there would never be more than a week delay on legislation and important stuff could be scheduled to go through on one "super sunday" when both houses are sitting in sucession (assuming all goes well and all parties agree.) In the case of the SC *not* approving of legislation, then again the RA has a week to think about it and bring back revised copy.

2) - Alternatively, bills could be "streamed" in that if legislation is proposed that is unlikely to ever have anything to do with the constitution or legal matters, then it might be approved by the RA without the necessity of further SC approval. It's important to note however that this method would require major changes to our contitutional setup again and should not be undertaken lightly.

I favor number one because I dont think we should fix what is not really broken (IMO) and to get into a situation where legislation merely passes by default I think defeats the whole purpose of government.

Well, I'm not for "legislation passed by default" and the Constitution even tends to say, under Art. I, Section 6, "Final ratification of law is performed by the Philosophic branch", but it's intention is to introduce the veto. This is similar to presidential-type constitutions where the laws are created by a representative assembly, but ratification is done by the President/Monarch. In our case, it's the judicial branch that ratifies.

I'd be quite content, however, with keeping up the tradition so far: the SC never met in the past 15 months, all bills were technically "approved" (sometimes explicitly, but more often than not implicitly), since the SC had just one voting member anyway, but a veto was raised on a single occasion where the approved bill clearly violated the constitution. So, in truth, the "tradition" is that the SC only raises the subject whenever a veto is due; a "rubber-stamp" of approval in all other cases is, in my mind, not really necessary.

This means that the SC can meet once per month in peace, to discuss other matters, not bill-related ones (or else the SC would truly be a "part" of the legislative process). It will meet extraordinarily when, after the RA session's transcript is publicly posted, a bill is deemed unconstitutional — and only then the SC would meet, discuss the issue, and eventually exercise a fundamented veto.

This is, however, something that needs the current SC's approval. For the sake of less bureaucracy, I would prefer the "semi-automatic-approval" system where the veto is only raised whenever necessary. This is mostly to prevent the SC to be bound by the RA's own meeting schedule; imagine that the RA would introduce daily meetings, which the SC wouldn't be able to keep up with Now, the SC is only bound to ordinarily meet once per month, so I'd prefer that veto-raising issues would be considered extraordinary meetings instead. This would mean that the RA could happily meet and pass bills into laws as often as they desired (sometimes in "emergencies" they could meet much often than weekly!), work through all the issues, and feel "unburdened" by the need of having to "wait" upon the SC to approve all bills, one by one.

In a sense this gives a little more power to the RA — they will be able to self-ratify bills into laws — while still keeping the SC's vetoing power in case something goes utterly wrong in that decision process For the sake of simplicity, and fluidity of the legislative aspect, I'd endorse this model.

Also, I tend to disagree that the current high number of bills presented to the RA for approval is not "an anomaly". I view the "anomaly" as having an RA without passing laws. The structure of Neualtenburg, based on legal precedent and not a pre-approved codex of laws, requires constantly that new laws get approved all the time, and the more, the better. The rate of law-passing will highly likely increase, not decrease, over time. Remember we're a tiny group; new planned/zoned communities are being forcibly introduced these days by Linden Lab (ie., at the moment, a new resident will get a plot of land, free of rent or of tier, for 21 days, with the right to choose one of 5 prefabs; if after 21 days they wish to keep that land + house, they'll have to go Premium. This means that new residents will now grow inside pre-planned communities). Very likely, this will mean that residents will start opening their eyes to governmental structures and be much more open to things like Neualtenburg, still an unique project (the only other fully-organised government-type sim is a role-playing game set in the sim of Miranda).

So, if Neualtenburg grows to, say, a thousand citizens, I expect that many more laws will be passed on each and every RA meeting (at that time, the RA will probably have 100 members and all work will be done on committees, who will report to the RA only for voting purposes, probably using a HUD attachment or something similar to speed up the process). Having the SC grow to a similar number, and having it approve all laws, one by one, with heavy discussion item by item, is technically unfeasible, unless the SC becomes, in fact, a "second chamber". If we wish to avoid this, the SC will have to focus on a "approval by default" system, where only dubious laws are reviewed for the eventuality of exercizing a veto, and all other laws will simply be auto-approved.

Still, as this is not a common view held by other SC members, the SC will certainly discuss the issue further on the upcoming meeting next month, and hopefully agree upon a common interpretation of the constitution on this issue...

I'm curious, how did the SC form? How did it choose it's members? I hate the idea that it is unelected, and has no terms. It seems very undemocratic. It sounds like the "founders only elite/unaccountable to anyone club to make sure that no one messes up our creation" Why not amend the constitution to determine how Guildmasters and members of the SC are chosen?

I'm not trying to be negative, it's just that a self-appointed body with no fixed terms and with the power to veto all legislation and pass judgement on citizens is a bad idea.

BTW, why not call it the senate or the judiciary? I think philosophers/scientists belong at the university, with scientists perhaps joining the guild as well. Just my 2 cents.

Pelanor, there is a fundamental "logic" in having three different bodies with three different methods of membership:

- The Representative Assembly is an elected body. It means that it passes laws, and that "influences" on the RA are done by faction politics.
- The Guild (Artisanal Branch) is free to join. Any citizen can become a member. Thus, it's "faction-free", and groups are created dynamically, as new members join and try to group themselves according to their wishes
- The Scientifc Council (Philosophical Branch) is a meritocracy. New members are invited by existing members to join, on the basis of some criteria that the SC selects; but approval of membership through a vote of confidence that

Thus, Neualtenburg is not — and never intended to be — a true democracy at all levels. Mind you, constitutional monarchies — about half of the EU countries, for instance — also have a democratically elected representative assembly, but some overseeing is done through the Head of State, which is not elected (although usually the representative assemblies have a saying on who becomes a Head of State). Other countries have a Supreme Court which is not elected, but nominated/appointed, to make sure they're "above" faction-level politics.

That is the same reasoning in Neualtenburg's three branches. One is elected and has legislative power; one is free to join, and deals with finance; the last one is a meritocracy, and handles the judicial power.

Controls are set in place where you can impeach members of any branch if they're not behaving according to the citizen's wishes. Since each branch is differently created, this also means that different power structures have all their own way to influence the overall government; no single group/faction/individual/association of citizens has ultimate power to "control" all government.

Ok, after reading the consitution again and again, it's all making more sense to me. Are there any bylaws for the AC and SC? They seem to govern themselves and don't have transparent procedures...

We're working on written procedures for the AC. Indeed, it is rather in need of them.


Sudane

You're right, Pelanor. The SC didn't even abide by the constitutional provision of "meeting once a month and posting the transcripts". In fact... there has been only one official meeting, in our history But things will change with the 'new' composition of the SC.

Although something is seriously lacking at the SC level: the way it'll handle eventual arbitration/moderation requests. All this was never needed before, and thus, it wasn't written. But something needs to be done, even if it's not much.

In the mean time, I've received a proposal for the forum moderation (which is also under the SC's jurisdiction) which will probably be the first 'formal' procedure to be documented and approved as internal procedure for the SC. More to follow.

Sorry to take this off-topic, but I think several types of contract enforcement, impeachment proceedings, certifying elections, oversight of transfer of power in the other 2 branches etc. could keep SC busy.

The contract arbitration by SC as a last recourse is a necessary element of one of my business plans. In fact it gives N'Burg a real business edge having that institution.