Proposed Amendment - Referenda and SC veto of constitutional amendments

This is rhetorical and not logical. That is, it is a rhetorical speech that appeals to emotions as opposed to building and supporting a rational argument. While it is quite useful in politics, especially political campaigns, it is quite out of place in regards to something as important as a constitutional amendment, which should be dissected and discussed logically.

~Ulrika~

Documents with intrinsic power are the foundation of all modern republics. You can read about it here. As you can see by the long list of countries on that page almost every large modern government derives its powers from founding documents. Also, a better example of a RL version of our Constitution is, um, a Constitution.

All citizens of the city are immigrants, who agree to the documents when they become citizens. When you joined you followed steps on this list of which number three states "To join, there are several documents to which you must agree, the Neualtenburg Covenant, which defines building requirements, and the Neualtenburg Terms of Service (ToS), which is modeled after the ToS for Second Life itself. Finally, citizens must uphold and adhere to the governmental system as defined in the Neualtenburg Constitution."

There is no "oligarchy problem". By definition, all three branches of the government are oligarchies. One is selected by merit, one is selected by vote, and the other is selected by productivity. Once more, the SC has no power. It is the founding documents that have the power. By A. III, S. 8 a law or amendment can only be rejected if it's in violation of the founding documents (not the SC).

You don't seem to understand that what makes N'burg unique is its founding documents. It's the only governmental system in SL that has a Constitution and Bill of Rights. If you circumvent them, the city reduces to rule by council which is the same as every other group in SL.

~Ulrika~

Ooh. Another idea could be to have confirmation hearings for potential SC members along with having them take an oath if confirmed.

~Ulrika~

Following Flyingroc's exhortation — "Neualtenburg is the people"1) — I would like you to consider the following suggestion. Flyingroc's reminded me that the discussion is about individuals, not "branches", nor "documents".

The purpose of the SC is clear, and in an ideal world, a well-behaved SC would never become a "threat", and this question would never arise. The mechanism of ratifying the SC's decisions by a popular referendum came up because, in a sense, some citizens (I would say quite a lot of them!) cannot trust specific individuals that might be sitting on the SC.

So the issue is not if the SC is holding too much "power" or not. The issue is if certain individuals are able to abuse that power, and do that consistently, and even worse, totally inside the law. This is an old dilemma that post-1945 RL constitutions had to deal with. Let me go back to it as a refreshment.

Adolf Hitler, as well as several other extremist right-wing dictators (I would add to the list Portugal's own António Salazar, who 'ruled' as a dictator for half a century), had managed to get lawfully elected to hold office, by public vote, and by respecting all the laws of the country. Unlike other forms of tyranny, this was not tyranny by coup d'état, but a tyranny arising from popular vote. As soon as you get a dictator-type in power — democratically elected — and you are able to change the Constitution at your whim, the democratic institutions are doomed.

It was not the fault of the Weimar Republik's constitution that "allowed" a tyrant to get elected. We could all comment upon the way you can easily manipulate the citizen's vote through adequate propaganda to get elected, and then work within the democratic system to undermine it, by succeeding revisions/amendments of rules, laws and Constitution, until you achieve total power. Unlike coup d'états, the danger of this model is that there is legitimacy in the way this form of dictatorship is achieved.

IRL, several countries, learning this lesson through the worst possible way, have subtly changed their own constitutions to prevent individuals (and not groups, organisations, or branches of government!) to abuse the system to put themselves into absolute power. Their solutions are sadly not too good, as you will shortly see.

Countries like Germany and Portugal (I think that the same happens in Spain as well) assumed that the threat for "working inside the democracy" to rise to absolute power comes from the extreme right-wing; in both cases, there are serious limitations to extreme right-wing parties to exist. They cannot get elected — their respective constitutions forbid the creation of extreme right-wing parties. The universal right of peaceful association is not suspended for them, however — they can still create associations, lobbies, etc. but they cannot get elected (and it's up to the republic's institutions to verify that a new party is not extreme right-wing before allowing them to participate in the elections).

In the US, a similar threat was found to exist, not on the extreme right-wing, but the extreme left-wing, so in theory a "communist party" cannot participate in the elections. Again, it's up to the republic's organs to verify that a party is not extreme left-wing.

In Neualtenburg, the concept that the ideology of parties is not a danger by itself (I'd say that as a "new country" we have left behind the 1950s and their "ideology-based" doctrines, since parties are much more fluid in their ideologies in the 21st century) has prevented us to label clearly where exactly the "hidden dangers" of "working within the system to overthrow it" are.

While it was recognized that the RA was rightfully checked — it cannot, say, make an amendment to the Constitution that puts the RA into absolute power, by ignoring the elections or something like that, because the SC would be able to veto such an amendment — apparently there was an oversight on what to do if the SC abused its powers, by preventing the RA to legislate, using cunning and imaginative "interpretations" of the founding documents to veto everything.

Well, this is not strictly true. After exchanging a few IMs, emails, and discussing it a bit (also, after a rather good night's sleep over the subject), I found something very interesting in the Constitution: the right of the RA to impeach any member of the SC is not bounded in any way.

We have all assumed (and I've been struggling with that as well!) that the RA, like the SC, could only impeach members of other branches if they commited something "illegal" or if they violated the Constitution. This gave most of the citizens an uneasy feeling, since a veto is neither "illegal" nor "unconstitutional", and impeaching the SC members with a vague notion that they were not serving well its intended purpose was too shaky, and very likely hard to get a majority of citizens to agree with. I tended to agree with that view; it's always hard to fight something shaky (ie. the SC's "claim of unconstitutionality" with something even more shaky (the RA's claim that the SC is not working as they are supposed to do). All sorts of personal interpretations could be made on each side, and people would probably abandon N'burg just because of badly applied rhetorics on each side...

Now when I had these thoughts, I should have consulted the Constitution immediately. To my surprise (and much delight!) the rules for the RA to impeach an SC member are different than for the other cases:


Notice closely that the RA does not need any reason at all for impeaching a member of the SC! Contrast these with all other cases: the SC has to justify the impeachment with "allegations of illegal conduct or of breaching the Constitution"; the Guild has to justify it with "failing to support the city fiscally, to act with fiscal responsibility, or to uphold the Constitution" (depending on the targeted member).

But the RA does not need to provide any justification at all! They just can point to a member of the SC and say: "I want that member impeached", end of story. There is no need for argumentation, discussion, rhetorics, or supplying documentation as "evidence". There are no needs for claiming "illegality", morals, ethics, or any other thing. No, the RA can just impeach a member of the SC because it wants — there is absolutely nothing that prevent them to do so!

Actually, this "absolute power" makes some sense to me. After all, a member of the SC will only be accepted through a vote of confidence by RA and Guild. The RA (or Guild), at the moment of passing that vote of confidence, is empowering them through the trust they will uphold the Constitution, and that's why the vote of confidence is important.

Now, I'm pretty sure that dictators like Hitler or Salazar have also sworn to uphold their respective constituitions; the problem is just when individuals like those are lying and have no intention of upholding anything. There were no mechanisms to "remove" them from office when the citizens at large suddenly found out that these people had abused their "trust".

But we Neualtenburgers have that mechanism. When a member of the SC (or the whole SC, for that matter) is seen as abusing their powers, after having given a vote of confidence, the citizens rightfully view that as unfair abuse of the vote of confidence. Thus, the vote of confidence can be instantly removed — and that's why the RA has this amazing ability to impeach members of the SC without needing any reason at all.

It's a symmetric power: the RA does not need any reason to pass (or not) a vote of confidence; similarly, they don't need any reasons to remove a member of the SC from office.

Since the SC has to vote at their meetings (Art. III, Sec 6) to exercise a veto (unlike the Guild, where the vetoing power is in the hands of the Guildmeister only), sometimes just removing one or two members is enough. But still this might be deemed not enough:


On the other hand:

Now we come to a very interesting point!

Let's assume the following arrangement. Dianne, Diderot, and myself are the only SC members with veto powers. The RA decides to impeach us three to prevent us from vetoing the current proposal under discussion.

Dianne, Diderot, and myself will be excused from the hearing, since we're being impeached. The hearing will consist of Aliasi and Flyingroc without voting powers; and the Guildmeister will sit both as leader of the RA and leader of the SC during that hearing

Since neither Aliasi nor Flyingroc can vote, Sudane, assuming she agrees with the RA's assessment of the need of impeachment, will now proceed smoothly to type on the transactions that under the rules for impeachment (and remember, we're using the RA's rules for impeachment — no need to present any argument whatsover!), Dianne, Diderot, and myself are out of the SC. Problem solved

What this means is that under the current model, to remove the whole SC from office, all that the RA needs is to agree on starting an impeachment hearing, and convince the Guildmeister of that need. The hearing would take about 10 minutes and be effective immediately. Even if the impeached members would wish to appeal, they would do so to a new SC, duly appointed through votes of confidence of both RA and Guild.

So, the RA, working together with the Guild, can overthrow the SC at any time, without much fuss. And they will certainly be able to do so very effectively. As a matter of fact, the SC is the most vulnerable branch to impeachment hearings from the RA. I think all this is pretty much balanced; if RA and Guild view the SC as being too powerfully abusing the system, it must be because something is seriously wrong with the SC, and there should be a very quick and effective way to deal with them.

Contrast this with the RA trying to impeach the Guild — they have to provide "evidence" to the SC that the Guild is acting in a financially-unsound way, provide ample proof of that, and convince the collective of the SC of all those arguments. Hard to do!

This concludes my appreciation that, like Kendra always said, the Guild is the most powerful branch of Government

On the other hand, instead of worrying about the veto, I think that it's much more worrying that there are not enough checks on impeachment hearings initiated by the SC (since the hearings are valid through a simple majority, even if the leader of the RA/Guild sits as leader of the RA during an impeachment by the SC, they will be easily out-voted!). I would advise that situation to be corrected quickly through an amendment of the constitution.

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(1) So is Soylent Green.

We somewhat had those when Flyingroc and Dianne were nominated, but on later confirmations (ie. Diderot), there was an agreement that this is not what the "vote of confidence" means: it's supposed to be a simple yes/no majority vote by both RA and Guild, without subjecting potential SC members to the public humiliation of answering questions. At least, nothing on the Constitution introduces the concept of "confirmation hearings".

Of course... nothing prevents the RA to introduce those "confirmation hearings" as part of the legislation process...

But "oaths" do not help much — people can always lie

And this is what I've been saying all along regarding Impeachment powers are set up as a successful check and balance.

Believe me, a year and a half as Gildemeister gave me a lot of opportunity to know where the true power lies. It's in the Guild --where it should be. An egalitarian ergocracy which is open to ALL citizens merely by application.

THAT is the true strength of Neualtenburg, and the fulcrum upon which the SDF rests it's policy.

Personally, I still have some doubts on what exactly an "unconstitutional amendment of the Constitution is", but since all this is really a matter of personal, subjective interpretation, my best advise is for both RA and Guild make double sure they only pass votes of confidence upon people they fully trust to be reasonable members to serve on the SC (actually, since both branches have to pass a vote of confidence, it only needs one vote of "no" for the member not to be approved...), and use the power of impeachment to make sure the SC's members do not abuse the confidence trusted to them...

What I think that will happen is that by carefully selecting members of the SC, while keeping them in check by selectively impeaching them, there is no way the SC can ever "block" the legislative process at all. They will more and more act as "advisors" in interpreting the Constitution and upholding it, than have any participative role in the governmental processes at all — since any abuse of power can be so easily checked by throwing the offending SC members out of office.

Notice that while RA members can be impeached perhaps with the same ease... they can come back at a later stage, by simply winnning the elections! Since it's up to the RA to set its own term, they could, after an "impeachment coup" launched by either the Guild or the SC, call for new elections and start from scratch — hopefully, this time, by remembering to impeach the SC first

The SC members have no such luck; once they're out of office, they stay out of office, since both RA and Guild can prevent them to come back. Ever.

Of course, I'm describing an impossible scenario, where all "governmental processes" would be decided by tactics of impeachment. I find this utterly unreasonable to happen; if we come to that stage, something is deeply rotten in N'burg. Again, I think that the problem here is to make sure that the RA can legislate in full confidence that they won't be prone to unreasonable veto'ing by the SC. They have the upper hand on the impeachment tactics, and any reasonable SC will most likely ponder well before wildly abusing that "power" — because that "abuse" will be so short-lived that it's hardly reasonable to expect it'll succeed at all.

What I hope that comes out of this interesting discussion is an understanding that the RA does not need a "popular vote" (ie. a referendum) to throw out the SC from office (or overriding their decisions), since this popular vote has already been given to them in the form of open and free elections, which resulted, among other powers, the power to get rid of an annoying SC, and the power to agree on the future composition of an SC when the former one has been thrown out.

Oh pooh. It's my city too, and I can rhapsodize about it, if I want to.

We are people, not just logical deduction machines. What I was trying to address in my post was the fear that Kendra expressed, of losing the essence of Neualtenburg. The general psychological climate, if you will. I just wanted to remind people that if we are to forge on, we must forge on in courage, not fear.

Damn that was a good read.

I agree with your statement above. There are so many other parts of the Constitution that were never completed and need work it seems odd to focus on the one thing that was done right. In regards to the SC impeachment, the sentence is incomplete and was meant to mirror the other branches, in that an SC member could only be impeached if they were failing to uphold the founding documents. I'd definitely amend that.

I also intended to go back and make all impeachment hearings take place within the SC itself, including SC impeachments. However, given the "too much power" rhetoric that's abound, perhaps that's something for the next RA to fix.

~Ulrika~

Oh yes. I was just stating that the addition of a formal confirmation hearing and oath could be amended to the Constitution as an alternative way of helping the RA to feel more powerful.

~Ulrika~

This isn't the intention of that section -- be careful not interpret the poorly written text literally! Members of the SC should only be impeached if found guilty of a crime and not on the whim of the RA.

This is exactly why I added this to the Constitution:
It is to prevent the literal interpretation of poorly written law as opposed to focusing on its intent.

~Ulrika~

I agree that it might be the original intention — but it's not what's written!

On the other hand, I think it answers rather well the current prejudice against the SC, by giving the RA a very powerful tool to replace quickly all the SC members that are abusing their power. Or that don't agree with the RA at all.

I don't think it's too bad. It means that if either the RA or the Guild made a mistake when passing a vote of confidence on a particularly troublesome SC member, they'll be able to quickly remove them from office.

Also, it means that a Sword of Damocles will be always hanging on top of the SC members: deviate from an expected path by a fraction of an inch, and you'll be out. This should be enough to satisfy any worries from RA and Guild. Also, it means that the SC will have to work much harder whenever wishing to interfere; they'll know that if their arguments are not well fundamented, there is a good chance they'll be out of the SC. Sloppyness will be actively discouraged.

All in all, I don't dislike the idea.

I know. This is exactly why I added this to the Constitution:
This is primarily so folks wouldn't opportunistically interpret the Constitution. Remember, interpretation sets precedence, so even though it might placate an aggressive RA now, a literal interpretation that violates intent could lead to great trouble further down the road.

~Ulrika~

OK , Ulrika. Please answer one question.

If the impeachment statement is interpreted as you wish, to whom is the SC accountable? Notice please the whom, i.e the constitution is *not* an acceptable anser to the question

This has already been discussed. You'll have to read the Constitution for yourself now. If you have not read it or cannot understand it then you certainly shouldn't be making amendments to it.

~Ulrika~

I think Gwyn may have reasoned us out of quite a conundrum with one important condition. In order for it to work as Gwyn described, two things must happen:

1) The RA must be able to initate impeachment proceedings on multiple SC members at the same time.

2) Those impeachments must be combined into a single action, causing all the persons subject to impeachment to be simultaneously recused.

If on the other hand, the impeachments are tried individually, only one person is recused for each trial, and it is likely their compatriots would close ranks, blocking the impeachment.


Accordingly, I offer the following proposed amendment as a possible substitute to the III, 8 amendment on the table.

In III,6 change:

If a Chair is accused, that
Chair will be excused for the duration of the hearing.

to

If a Chair or Chairs is/are accused, the
accused will be excused for the duration of the hearing.
If multiple chairs are accused simultaneously, the impeachments will be joined and voted on as a single issue.

Gwyneth, do you see what happens when you attempt to literally interpret bad language in the constitution for political reasons instead of interpreting the intent? You've now put it in peoples' heads that the RA can dismiss the entire branch simultaneously. Lovely.

I had such high hopes for this RA too. I thought they would be the ones that finally broke the gridlock, expanded the sim, and brought business N'burg. Instead, a small group of them are off playing politics with the Constitution, failing to serve their constituents like good representatives should.

~Ulrika~

Hi Ulrika, can you please summarize restate your position again, regarding Claude's question? This thread is very long, and some of us (i.e. me) do not have the bandwidth to process so much information all at once.

I'll do it it plain Kendra language.

The SC is accountable to the other two branches of Government and to the Founding documents.

Thanks Kendra. We could all use the clarity of Kendra laguage.

Here are my concerns:

1. The SC is accountable to the Founding documents

I don't see that this is useful. This is analogous to saying the Pope is accountable to the Bible. Neither the Bible nor the founding documents can act against those who are accountable to them. Also, see number 2.

2. The SC is accountable to the other two branches of government

If we are to follow Ulrika's claim that the original intent of the constitution is that SC members can only be impeached for violating the founding documents, we then have this problem: the SC itself is the final authority on what is a violation of the founding documents or not.

Thus, the SC can claim on *any* impeachment move: "you cannot impeach us, because we have not violated the founding documents."

As for gwyn's interpretation of the RA having the power to impeach on a whim... I must admit I am uneasy about it.

1) I disagree. It's a poor analogy. The SC interprets the Founding Documents --it does not own them. The Documents belong to the People of Neualtenburg. If the People find the SC off base there are mechanics in the Constitution to deal with the problem already.


2) An SC under impeachment would not have the foundation to rule anything. In the case of the two branches of Government bring Impeachment hearings against the SC it is the Gildemeister who would be doing the interpreting.

Thems is the rules, folks.

Hm, it seems that's not what Ulrika is saying:



...but which body interprets what the founding documents mean? The SC itself.

Here's a ferinstance.

Let's say that one day, Gwyn shouts "PIE!" in the Platz. The RA, and the Guild, being boring and stuffy, gets so angry that they impeach Gwyn. The SC issues a ruling saying that obviously yelling "PIE" in the Platz is not against the founding documents. Should the SC be allowed to nullify the impeachment?

Ok, what if Gwyn's offense was banning everyone from the Platz, the RA and the Guild impeach Gwyn, and the SC says that banning everyone from the platz is not against the founding documents? Should the SC's nullification of the impeachment stay?

Of course, these situations are contrived, and are unlikely to happen (well, I wouldn't put it past Gwyn to shout "PIE" in the platz!). However, there may be grey areas where the SC disagrees with the RA and the Guild on constitutional matters. If that disagreement becomes the central issue of a SC impeachment, who should give way?

What I'm hearing from your post above, Kendra, is that the SC should have no power to nullify an impeachment of its members. Am I characterizing your position correctly?

If so, maybe this needs to be clarified in the constitution.

In the case of an Impeachment of an SC member the Gildemeister sits as the chair of the hearings.

Actually, on the case of the RA impeaching one member of the SC, the Gildemeister sits as the Leader of the RA; and one member of the Guild sits as the Leader of the SC during the hearing. So this means that the RA impeaching an SC member will have the Guild both accusing and defending

But, unlike what happens with the Guild's veto power, which is in the hands of the Gildemeister only, the SC is a committe and can only emit binding decisions by majority (2/3 in the case of applying sanctions or expulsion of one of its own members). The Dean of the SC does not have "special powers" except for purely bureaucratic ones (ie. appointing new members — but they still need a majority of SC members to vote them in)

So, in this case, 3 things could happen:

1) The RA impeaches a member, but nobody at the SC wants that to happen. So, since there are 3 voting members (at the moment) at the SC, even with the Gildemeister saying "I agree with the impeachment", the Gildemeister would be outvoted 3:1. Thus no one can effectively remove an SC member if the others don't agree.

2) The RA impeaches a member, and a majority of SC members agrees with that decision. This could be a way for the SC to get rid of a troublesome member but not having a 2/3 majority to do so. I think this is the least interesting case, but it might be important in the case one member of the SC misbehaves, but the SC cannot agree on a 2/3 majority to expel that member, but only on a 50% + 1 majority (as a sidenote, right now, since there are only 3 voting members, a simple majority is actually 2/3 of the votes but this is just due to an amazing coincidence on the number of the voting members).

3) The RA impeaches all voting members of the SC simultaneously. In that case, all of them are excused from the impeachment hearing, and it'll be the Gildemeister deciding it all. This is loophole that I've alluded to, and that effectively allows the RA, acting in concert with the Guild, to get rid of the whole SC if they misbehave. Note that there are no "interpretations" in this case; if it's the RA impeaching the whole of the SC, they do not need to give any reason for doing so (ie. there will be no arguments of if the impeachment is "lawful" or "according to the founding documents" or any question asked). Of course, if the Gildemeister is unwilling to accept a total or partial impeachment of the whole SC, there is nothing the RA can do about it. As said, they do not need to present any arguments at all, just the will to impeach.

This is so far the only way the SC is "accountable" to others, and let me repeat it: it's the RA and the Guild, acting in concert, that will allow new members of the SC to hold office; and again, it's the RA and the Guild, once more acting in concert, that are able to revoke the privilege of being an SC member. In my opinion, there is really no further need of additional mechanisms: the SC is fully accountable to both RA and Guild together.

While doing research for a topic in another thread, I came across a transcript that shows that almost every point and counterpoint that has been brought up in this thread has already been brought up in an SC meeting on 29 Jan 2006 here. It's just fascinating!

There are the following:

1. The heart of the Constitution is recognized: "The Philosophic branch may veto or rewrite and resubmit a bill or constitutional amendment if it is in violation of any of the founding documents."
   
2. The erroneous "looping logic" statement appears from multiple individuals.
   
3. A single individual correctly sees the phrase as having importance as a safeguard.
   
4. An individual expresses their desire for a direct democracy in regards to modifying the Constitution.

I'd love to know the source of this desire to eliminate the most important sentence in the Constitution and why it has dominated the agenda for the past four months, where other issues are clearly of more importance. Further, I find it troubling that folks are worried that the RA isn't strong enough. Personally, I'm worried that the Bill of Rights soon won't be strong enough!

~Ulrika~