Full Bench Trial Amendment

The Magisterium
1

Article C: Judicial, Section 1: Establishment & Organization

  1. This Concordat does hereby invest judicial power in the Conclave, which shall be the interpreter of this Concordat and the judge and jury of Residents.

  2. The Standing Orders of the Conclave shall be considered legally binding within the Conclave, unless contradicted by this Concordat or statutory law.

  3. The Conclave shall be composed of five Arbiters, which shall not serve concurrently as the Delegate or as a Magister.

  4. All Arbiters shall participate in all decisions made by the Court, unless contradicted by Statutory Law, with the exception of Arbiters who have recused due to a significant conflict of interest.

2

I support this amendment

3

I don’t support this. It’s often the case Arbiters need to take a LOA or may miss a matter - but if one Arbiter is missing but 4 vote then I don’t see why a decision is invalid or must be postponed. If this issue is with trials, then it should be specified to trials since the current ssytem works well for most things.

4

How about: “Any decision of the Court must be made by a majority of Arbiters” instead?

Also btw the current system does this for judicial review already iirc

5

I am in strong support of this amendment. My preference is for the full court, rather than a majority. Perhaps in addition to “who have recused due to a significant conflict of interest” there can be “or those who are excused on a Leave of Absence” or something to that effect.

8

How does “a significant conflict of interest” relate to Article C, Section 5 (2nd), point 5 of the Concordat?

And why the “Court” here, and not “Conclave” as throughout this Section?

And doesn’t “unless contradicted by Statutory Law” go against the principle that Statutory law can’t contradict the Concordat?

And what do we do if one Arbiter is on LOA? Halt all decisions until the LOA is over?

9

No because the Concordat can designate something to be resolved in statute – something it does in a couple places, chiefly A.4.3. “Further exceptions to this power may be defined in law.” And it doesn’t “contradict” the Concordat in a legal sense if the Concordat empowers it to, only in a practical/semantic sense.

For the other things, like the “significant coi” rather than “substantial prior involvement”, “Court” instead of “Conclave” and LOA, I think that’s a failure to think through my wording. How does this sound:

“All Arbiters shall participate in all decisions made by the Conclave, unless contradicted by Statutory Law, with the exception of Arbiters who have recused or taken leave of duties as defined in the Standing Orders of the Conclave.”