Presences: Gwyneth Llewelyn, Diderot Mirabeau, Flyingroc Chung (late)
Agenda:
[*:306x713l]Proposal by Dianne Mechanique for the SC not to publish its transcripts, but only a Journal of the meeting [/*
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[*:306x713l]Inviting new members to the SC[/*306x713l]
[*:306x713l]Membership of SC members in other organisations (political or not)[/*306x713l]
[*:306x713l]Establishing the right of the SC to appoint further judges to provide a full-working Judiciary according to the terms set by the Chair of the Judiciary Comission (no less than three Judges of the Common Judiciary)[/*306x713l]
[*:306x713l]Reviewing Diderot Mirabeau's post in the forums regarding an alleged [i:306x713l]ad hominem[/i:306x713l] attack with the intention of insulting citizen Ashcroft Burnham[/*306x713l][/list
306x713l]1. After some deliberation, verifying indeed that the Constitution only charges the SC with Article III, Section 5:
[quote:306x713l]The SC shall keep and publish a journal of its proceedings. All individual votes of the members of the SC on any question shall always be entered in the journal, along with a statement regarding their personal philosophy on a given vote. [/quote:306x713l]
the SC moved to unanimously approve Dianne's proposal not to publish transcripts of the SC meetings any more, and to state that unauthorised transcripts taken by anyone else are henceforward forbidden.SC meetings will continue to be open and free to attend to the public, but any one assisting them is bound by honour to follow the established procedures.
2. The SC unanimously decided to formally extend an invitation to Patroklus Murakami to become a member of the SC, subject to his availability.
3. The SC unanimously decided to recommend, that unless a subsequent bill changes this, the membership in the SC should not exclude affiliation/association with other organisations, unless explicitly forbidden otherwise.
Diderot stated for the record that, since much of the conflict-resolving tasks of the SC have been lifted off the shoulders of their members by the Judiciary Act, and since the SC is, from now on, bound to take decisions only on the basis of a strictly judicial point of departure, the whole issue of partisanship seemed to him to be somewhat diminished.
Gwyneth also reminded that the right to free association is embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 20 (1).
4. After much deliberation, the SC concluded the following:
[*:306x713l]That once a Judge of the Common Jurisdiction was appointed and validated, as well as the Chair of the Judiciary Commission was appointed and validated, the Judiciary Act entered in full effect of the law;[/*
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[*:306x713l]That as soon this happened, the SC has no further role in establishing and defining the start of the Judiciary, but that the Judiciary will establish itself under the self-same Judiciary Act in full effect;[/*306x713l]
[*:306x713l]That, under the Judiciary Act, the Chair of the Judiciary Commission is fully entitled to define the minimum number of judges that should serve in the Judiciary;[/*306x713l]
[*:306x713l]That, to comply with the demands of the Chair of the Judiciary Commission, the Board of the Judiciary Commission is thus compelled to complete procedures for qualification of at least two further Judges, subject to appointment by the Public Judiciary Scrutiny Panel, or the Representative Assembly if said Public Judiciary Scrutiny Panel has less than three judges;[/*306x713l]
[*:306x713l]That, to allow pending cases to be heard, the Board of the Judges of the Common Jurisdiction shall publish a Code of Procedures;[/*306x713l]
[*:306x713l]That the previous points should be completed in reasonable time, not over 28 days after the Judiciary Act was approved by the Representative Assembly (or not over 28 days after the requirement for the apppointment of another two Judges was made public), and that the Chief Judge of the Common Jurisdiction is compelled to comply with this required timeline, subject to further inquiry by the Scientific Council if the demands are not met, which could lead to gross dereliction of duty and be grounds for impeachment.[/*306x713l][/list306x713l]Diderot further clarified that the current deadlock is due to the lack of procedures for qualifying judges the number of which needs to be 3, and it is the view of the SC that this deadlock prevents the Judiciary from working, meaning maintaining the [i:306x713l]status quo[/i:306x713l] is equivalent to dereliction of duty. Furthermore, such dereliction stems from the lack of a proper Code for Qualification rather than any other cause and that it is the responsibility of the Board of the Judiciary Commission to have such a Code ready. Failing to publish such a Code is a culpable offence and must therefore be ready within 28 days of the date by when the requirement for the Judiciary to consist of 3 judges was made public.
This deliberation was approved unanimously.
5. After reviewing the thread under discussion ([url=http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtop ... 1:306x713l]http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtop ... =2351#2351[/url:306x713l]), Ashcroft Burnham accused Diderot Mirabeau to be in strict violation of the Forum Moderation Guidelines by publicly calling Ashcroft's prose "pompous rhetoric" with the intent to insult Ashcroft personally ([url=http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtop ... 1:306x713l]http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtop ... =2331#2331[/url:306x713l]), quoting: "I do not believe that it is worth engaging with somebody who believes in making malicious comments such as this. Why should people respect what you write when you show such persistent and malicious disrespect for others? Your conduct is utterly deplorable, and wholly unbecoming of anybody who holds public office."
After a review by the members of the SC, it was unanimously decided that the phrase "pompous rhetoric" cannot be construed to imply, indeed, that the author of that rhetoric is, indeed, "pompous" (which would be a clear [i:306x713l]ad hominem[/i:306x713l] attack). In fact, the quoted phrase is targeted to the [i:306x713l]prose[/i:306x713l] (and its [i:306x713l]style[/i:306x713l]) and not to the [i:306x713l]person[/i:306x713l] writing the prose, and this is acceptable, by itself, as a form of rhetoric — one which is very popular in these forums, and very often employed successfully in the open debate, without the intention of personally attacking the writers, but only their ideas. Any conclusion to the contrary would, indeed, require intervention by the Forum Moderators to effectively suspend a large majority of the current forum posters, limiting their freedom of expression through an open, free, and impartial channel set up by the Government of the CDS for this very purpose.
Therefore, the SC concludes that this particular case should be dismissed as not having violated any of the forum procedures, and that Diderot Mirabeau should not be sanctioned in any form.
This deliberation was approved unanimously.
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