Non-Citizen Loophole Repair

The Magisterium
1

Article C Judicial, Section 4: General Judicial Powers & Limits

  1. The Conclave may rule on the actions of the Delegate or the Praesidium and nullify any which are contrary to this Concordat or statutory law.

  2. The Conclave may nullify any law passed by the Magisterium that is contrary to this Concordat.

  3. The Conclave may remove a Vizier or Magister by a 2/3 vote for abuse of power, inactivity, or dereliction of duty.

  4. The Conclave cannot overturn any part of the Concordat.

  5. The Conclave may not apply any legislation to any situation that occurred before the legislation was passed.

  6. The Conclave may not apply any legislation to any non-resident, who is not under the jurisdiction of the Concordat, but may apply legislation on residents for actions relating to the democratic integrity of The East Pacific which were taken while not residing in The East Pacific.

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The Conclave recently delivered the following decision:

“In discussions about Omission, it is important to note that TEP laws are only the jurisdiction of TEP. It would be unreasonable to extend the power of TEP’s laws to also involve other regions. For TEP laws to apply to a specific person, they would also have to be a citizen.”

In my opinion, this judicial activism is outside the jurisdiction of a criminal trial and furthermore unfounded in law. First of all, non-citizen residents are subject to the laws of The East Pacific, as implied by Article E, Section 4, Clause 1, which states “Each Resident shall be given a swift and impartial trial by the Conclave if an indictment is made against them.”

Meanwhile, in the very section I am amending, there is limitation against charges for a crime that wasn’t a crime when the action occurred but no limitation against charges for a crime that was committed before the resident or citizen was a resident or citizen. Finally, the Treason Act indicates that “Every one” participating in actions described is guilty of the crime of those actions, not “Every citizen” or even “Every resident.”

However, even if we ignore all that and take Conclave’s word as gospel, it is problematic and needs to change. Clearly, it’s not explicit enough, so here is me making it explicit.

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Let me clarify -

User A belongs to a region who hates TEP for the last 5 years and has declared war on TEP, attempted to delbump TEP, etcetc.

User A has a change of heart and sees that TEP is good and their region is bad.

User A joins TEP as a resident and aspires to contribute.

User A will then be put on trial for past actions under this amendment and banished.

Did I get that right?

3

Depending on the amount of tangible harm done, yes. And I imagine contrition will be taken into account when determining sentencing anyway. A “change of heart” doesn’t clear up five years of trying or succeeding in destabilizing or overthrowing our government imo.

4

When determining sentencing, what sentencing can be adjusted though? We only have two options, lifelong ban and 5 year ban

5

Okay so five year ban instead of lifelong. I’d also be in favor of considering more flexibility in sentencing but that’s an Act change and not an Amendment, so it would have to come later.

6

You do realize you’ve just put Agalaesia on trial (outside of TRR, they were in Karma before coming to TEP)?

I don’t think affiliation with a hostile region is equal to “trying or succeeding in destabilizing or overthrowing our government”.

By that logic you’ve also put me on trial as, if my brain serves well, my first NS nation spawned in TWP. And I’ve been in Gay as well, who’s founder was openly and politically hostile to TEP.

And outside of that, if that’s the goal then we are removing one of key values of TEP - second chances.

I believe “democratic integrity” needs to be outlined otherwise we are throwing a new term with no understanding - and this can be abused. Because as of now, with that claise, we can put half of TEP on trials. Yourself included, as you are Citizen of region initially founded by WW. There is too much possible stretch in current proposal and your idea behind it, in my eyes.

7

Another case is precedent of permitting laws to act in a retroactive matter. If we set one, we are building the grounds for hostile forces, should they appear in future, to pass a law just so they could get rid of TEPers who’s be undermining their destabilization attempts.

8

I don’t think it’s a loophole, I think it makes sense that you cannot be put on trial for things done while not a cit, all of the crimes that could seriously impact the region cannot be carried out without citizenship

9

Forgive me if my memory is hazy, but I don’t remember Agalaesia participating in any attempts by Karma to subvert our democracy in violation of the law. In fact, I don’t remember any attempts by Karma to subvert our democracy period.

In my opinion, existing somewhere does not fall under “actions relating to the democratic integrity of The East Pacific.” As an Arbiter, would that be your interpretation?

I agree. Any ideas?

Being a citizen of a region founded by WW means nothing but since you’re accusing me of treason, then put your money where your mouth is and put me on trial – I’ve been a citizen of TEP as long as I’ve been involved in GP, so the current Conclave ruling doesn’t make me exempt. Last two attempts to do so didn’t work out well, but honestly I welcome the challenge.

This is blatantly not true. Ex post facto prosecution is still illegal.

The only exception being omission to prevent treason or treason-espionage, which I think are worth applying to people, to be clear.

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Here’s a metaphor that I employed when explaining this privately to some Viziers:

Imagine someone throws a molotov cocktail across the border and hits something. Then, they cross the border. Under my amendment, they can be prosecuted for that.

Throwing a molotov cocktail is the example I use because it is an action that causes harm. Believing that this amendment applies to (a) infiltrating allies or (b) being in a region just doesn’t change the text of the amendment. It astounds me because it’s clearly obviously not true and I have no idea where anyone got that idea.

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Also it bothers me that everyone keeps saying citizen instead of resident. Under the Concordat, residents have a right to a trial.

12

I feel like at the end of the day, we have to define what attacks to democratic integrity are, and I really don’t think omission to treason should be considered an attack, I personally feel like we should specify what charges can the Conclave charge with this new power through the treason act, or (And I think this is better, define specifically the charges we can use to reject citizenship applications)

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13

I don’t see how somebody can commit treason espionage without residency/citizenship, one would need either of these to access any private channel in a likely scenario

Imagine someone throws a molotov cocktail across the border and hits something. Then, they cross the border. Under my amendment, they can be prosecuted for that.

This is not a good metaphor for omitting to prevent treason. A better metaphor would be that a man’s friend says he is going to throw a molotov cocktail across the border, the man does nothing to warn the other side about it and at some indeterminate point after talking to his friend, the man crosses the border.

And this is where the metaphor ends, because in reality such man may or may not have ill intentions against TEP, with no statute of limitations, this law would apply to all sorts of different circumstances in which someone could reasonably be or not be a threat to TEP. And on top of that we are not taking into account how much weight conversations that could be considered “omitting to prevent treason” may have in the mind of someone who is not in TEP at that moment but is also not hostile to us.

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It’s one thing to say we can investigate things that would be crimes in TEP that were done in other regions, but it’s another thing entirely to actually investigate actions undertaken outside our region. Who would gather evidence? Would we depend solely on having connections in that other region? What if it’s a region we have no connections with? I think the quality of the investigation is likely to be, or at least bears a major risk of being, hampered.

Still, though, I suppose it’s ultimately a matter of convincing the Arbiter(s). If the evidence is shoddy, that probably just means it’s harder to make a conviction. But something gives me pause about it.

I think my thoughts on this bill are that I’m not convinced the change would be necessary. I’m not sure we actually gain that much in practice from this change.

15

Based on Virgolia’s comments, and considering the initial intention of this proposal, I’m thinking of changing the proposal as follows:

  1. Clarifying that the resident right to trial includes the applicability of the law on non-citizen residents, to overrule the blatantly unconstitutional aspect of Conclave’s ruling
  2. An additional bit bringing back the Praesidium’s power to remove citizenship on the basis of hostile actions, with a very strict scrutiny standard for doing so.

This should solve these two problems in two ways rather than in one way. I think the core problem here is I was trying to do a trickshot to kill two birds with one stone and it was a very wonky pathway.

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I have no objections to the first of these, but what would be the problem 2 seeks to address? If there are hostile actions, then surely those would be crimes, and therefore it would be a matter for the court to address, and not so much the Praesidium.

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Non-residents, as we’ve established, cannot be convicted of crimes. Let’s consider if, instead of TSP, Fedele truly was infiltrating TEP, and you did not lift a finger to stop him. If it was true and the Praesidium knew it to be true, we would not have granted you citizenship. However, we did not receive the logs until after you had citizenship. So if it was truly the case and not just a wild goose chase to root out a spy, then you could have endorsed and refused to stop an attempt to infiltrate and coup The East Pacific. This is a good reason to strip you of citizenship, but as far as I’m aware (I haven’t done the legal readings just yet) it would not be possible.

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On the basis that years prior, prior to holding any legal obligations to the East, this hypothetical me did not report any activity?

Clearly, but that simply highlights to me that we should be very hesitant at transferring that sort of power to the Praesidium. After all, and let us put this hypothetical scenario in which this infiltration occurred aside and take a look at the facts as they occurred, and which plainly inspired this amendment - it was the Praesidium that received the logs and motioned for a trial. The fact is that the logs, at best evidence that hinted at something suspicious but with no hard evidence to verify that this non-existent infiltration had actually occurred, and logs that were four or five years out of date at that, were enough for members of the Praesidium to jump to prosecution in the middle of an election. Would they have hesitated to strip me of citizenship, even if there was no confirmation that a crime had been committed? I don’t believe they would have, and I furthermore believe it goes against the nature of the Praesidium - as the body charged with security, suspicion is in their nature, but suspicion is not always fair. The Praesidium is entrusted to keep the region safe, but that mandates a suspicious mindset and culture. “Better safe than sorry” is practically their motto, but that is little consolation to a genuine Delegate/Arbiter/Magister candidate or even a simple voter that got stripped of their citizenship for something that A) happened prior to their arrival and B) they did not receive a proper trial to defend or explain themselves.

Trials allow for a fair application of the law, and they are by nature a more transparent process than the Praesidium’s discussions and decisions. Moreover, from the sounds of it the Praesidium would be allowed to do this without a crime being actually committed - which is alarming to me. The power to punish should remain with the court, and solely with the court.

This will, I’m sure, be a controversial question, especially from me, but it is fundamentally one that needs to be asked and that lies at the core of this amendment: would it be a good reason?

In this case, the question is not whether a crime was committed. After all, whether or not the evidence the Praesidium would receive in this hypothetical was real or not isn’t relevant to that consideration - we are accepting that there was no crime, as the hypothetical individual was not a resident and thus could commit no crime. The question we are left with, then, is if we should be retroactively punishing people for not upholding a legal obligation they did not hold at the time at all.

To be frank, I don’t think I would trust someone more that, with no legal obligation whatsoever to do this, would leak from their region’s leadership channels, citizen channels or wherever else they were supposed to have heard from that treason was about to be committed against us. It demonstrates disloyalty and a lack of principles - after all, coming to us in that event would, by nature, be breaking the laws and/or trust of the region they reside in. To my mind that is not an acceptable expectation we can place on anyone - especially when years have passed. The individual that has obtained citizenship with us might not even remember it occurring. They themselves did nothing but keep to their legal obligations in their home region and did not break the trust that was placed in them, they committed no crime to us themselves. And now, when they have come to us, with no indication that they are committing a crime now, with no indication that they hold any hostility towards us still, the Praesidium should just be stripping them of their citizenship?

That is not logic that makes sense to me, and it is not logic I wish to see law changes support.

19

Correct.

I said imagine if this was true and here you are arguing it’s not. I don’t buy this “the Praesidium acts too quickly” argument particularly when a massive problem with the endorsement cap procedural discussions was how long it takes for the Praesidium to come to a decision.

So we should do it the way my amendment seeks to then?

It’s not about legal obligation it’s about harm done.

And it’s not retroactive.

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Non residents, without any legal obligations to TEP, and without ratifying the concordant, cannot be convicted of crimes.

Curious though - Can they be persona non grata-ed? That’s what other regions seem to be doing. Is that an alternative way forward?