Here is a reformat of most of the Acts:
The remaining Acts are the Endorsement Caps Act, the Regional Officers Act, and the Citizenship Act which all have amendments at vote, the Pacificum Orientale Awards Act which will be replaced soon, and the Public Official Disclosure Act which will likely have its proposed amendment put to vote soon.
kk.
I motion to vote.
Seconded
I don’t believe we should have this type of formatting for Concordat Amendments, since this formatting is never used for them. Also, you may want to say “as defined by the SOM” in your definition of Bill; RN the definition is too vague.
Done, additionally clarified that the Provost must present a reformat of non-conforming Acts or the SOM to the Magisterium to avoid confusion about how the Provost can reformat.
I protest the separation of definitions and citation as two different sections - both are administrative, general provisions with regards to laying the foundation of the act, and if each subtype of general provision is separated into a different section, I believe it causes unnecessary clutter. For concise, condensed formatting, one section for general groundwork is, I feel, necessary. I know Vussul disagrees with me on this, but I want to get a full discussion on this so we see where others stand.
I’m also concerned about a couple other things. One of these concerns, albeit minor, is that this bill does not deal with situations for additional sections (we’re supposed to just assume that there can be more sections than three, which tbf, is not a wild leap, but it would be nice to see examples of multiple categorized sections to best guide that format) and another is that it does not deal with how to format things when a proposed act has a clause repealing another act - this is something that happens common enough that it may pose an issue. Personally, I think something like that could be added to a Section I. General Provisions if we go that route. Otherwise, as is often the norm, it’d have to be an additional one-clause-section at the end for repeals.
The biggest concern I have is, in multiple parts, this:
By the wording of this act, the Standing Orders of the Magisterium would have to start with a citation and definitions section. I’m not sure how I feel about that - I think SOM and Bills are very different. I think having a citation clause/section makes no sense, since the Concordat is what creates SOM as SOM, and so it’s unnecessary. Furthermore, the SOM right now has a date attached at the top. Perhaps an administrative style, it would have to be removed by this bill.
By the current provisions of this act, Concordat Amendments can take any format they want. A bored Aivintis has, many a time, experimented with weird Concordat amendment styles - a full post that acts like a bill by giving a preamble and an operative clause which amends the Concordat, or a simple copy and paste with green and red, or even a before and after. I think if we want comprehensive formatting, we can’t leave out particular types of bills.
In the same vein, Resolutions are lumped in - they are a type of bill - with this specific formatting. I personally dislike this - I prefer for resolutions three sections: Citation (here, little definitions or general provisions are needed), Findings, and Resolutions. One section to name it, one section to indicate facts leading to the resolution, and one section to make promises/commitments/suggestions. This formatting is currently what most resolutions follow to my knowledge, and it’s not explicitly endorsed here. In other words, there can and will still be wild variation in Resolution formatting, because it’s treated the same as an act when it is a very different kind of bill. If you add Resolutions to the exception, you just get the same problem as Concordat Amendments.
Standing Orders Amendments (and actually, amendments to Acts) are applied to this same standard as well, which is really weird. By the logic, it would mean any amendment, no matter how small, would have to have to go like this:
SECTION I. CITATION
…1.1. This amendment shall be known and cited as the Pluralist Amendment to the Executive Act.
SECTION II. AMENDMENT
…2.1. Clause 1.4 of the Executive Act shall be amended to add “Aivintis Smellz” at the end of the sentence, preceded by a comma.
Now I know this isn’t intended, and that there may be a strong argument for an interpretation which says that amendments only need to ensure that the act they’re amending goes by the formatting, but when it says this format must be applied to ALL BILLS other than the Concordat Amendment, one can see how it starts to start some problems.
My solution to this five part conundrum is as follows:
Multiple operative sections of this act that each explain a type of bill and how it should be formatted. It may have to split SOM definitions of bills - by the SOM, “Proposal” defines a new law and an amendment of an existing law, but they might need different approaches with regards to formatting.
Of course, considering most people wrongfully interpret the category of “Amendment” as an amendment to an act, even though the SOM, for years, has defined Proposal as “a bill that, upon enactment, shall form part of the binding body of law of TEP or an amendment thereof.” and Amendment as “a bill that, upon passing a Magisterial vote, shall be placed before the Citizens in referendum to amend the Concordat, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Concordat”, there may be a need to amend the SOM to separate the current definitions of bills further and make them into categories which can easily be covered in different sections of a formatting act like this, but IDK. But yeah
Another small thing: Do we want to talk about including the formatting of votes (i.e. CA-2023-2, for example) in this act, or would that be best suited to either the SOM or Provost discretion?
Another, actually big thing: Do we want to do it as described currently, where the Provost must start a vote to amend the formatting (What if the vote fails? We’re in violation of the act? Or no? In the latter, case, it means this act is only a suggestion anyway, because it can’t be enforced and we have to vote on each formatting individually as well - this might actually bring back Halley’s concerns on execution) or do we wanna amend the Concordat to expand discretionary edits to this? I’d prefer the latter and, tbh, I’m not convinced by the idea that discretionary edits should even have votes. They’re discretionary for a reason, and there’s no way to abuse it. I say this act is most effective if that amendment occurs and the provost can enforce it themselves without the need for a vote which may fail.
Anyway, if this proposal stays as is, the glaring issues with it would be legally binding issues, and we’d probably have to completely rewrite it anyway, so I would vote against as-is. That said, the basic idea is one I do not object to.
The proposed Act has been updated.