[quote="Fernando Book":p96wn6x1]Answering the questionnaire would take around 7,000 words (using, and I know these are arbitrary figures, the 50% of the target in short answers, and 75% of the target in the long ones). This is a very long essay, the same length of our [url=http://www.aliasi.us/nburgwiki/tiki-ind ... 1:p96wn6x1]Judiciary Act.[/url:p96wn6x1]
In a sim that doesn't know the meaning of 'simple', the questionnaire is of a unusual complexity, and it lacks any proportionality to the foreseeable tasks the judiciary will perform. What our Chief Judge is doing with the judiciary qualifications is something similar as requiring the in-world builders to have some degree to ensure their buildings are not going to collapse.[/quote:p96wn6x1]
This is a seriously flawed metaphor. Architecture in SecondLife is vastly different (and vastly easier) to architecture in real life. In SecondLife, there is no concept of structure: the buildings [i:p96wn6x1]cannot[/i:p96wn6x1] fall down. As long as they are the right shape and have the right textures, they suffice. There is no need to consider the types of building materials, the kinds of joints used, the sort of stress that tall buildings might have in the wind, how the building will withstand rain, how the plumbing should be organised, and so forth. It requires some artistic and design skill, and ability to work with the SecondLife interface, and perhaps some understanding of how people interact with spaces in SecondLife to do well, but, overall, thetask is inherently radically different, and far easier than real-life architecture.
That is not so with a judicial system. There is nothing about the fact that it is a judicial system for SecondLife that makes the functions that a judicial system inherently seeks to perform radically simpler. Whilst there are fewer kinds of things to have legal disputes about, the remaining sorts of things (harassment, breach of contract, intellectual property, real property, etc.) raise just as many complex and intellectually challenging issues as they do in the first life.
Law is about the application of rules to govern human behaviour. The complexity comes from the inherent complexity of human behaviour, and the inherent complexity of the interface between that behaviour and rules that can be parsed by humans. The fact that humans are interacting through a virtual world on a bank of servers somewhere in California does not make the slightest difference to those factors.
[quote:p96wn6x1]We can ask ourselves, and answer in a honest way: how many money am I going to risk in a in-world judiciary instead of going to the real world police and judges? One hundred euros/dollars? Two hundred?
So I don't see any of our judges solving those "significant commercial cases" Justice Soothsayer writes about and that will need, if we keep this pace, professional judges, lawyers, [i:p96wn6x1]amicus curiae[/i:p96wn6x1], juries, ushers, stenotypists and a wig hairdresser. I'm quite sure that we won't receive cases in which their monetary amount balances the costs for the state. Because, remember, we are going to found citizens eager to play without compensation or at a minimum cost any of this parts, but only as long it is fun.
I can imagine our judiciary solving in-CDS political or parapolitical cases (say, about the interpretation of the citizenship requirements or the right to vote) and cases concerning to the application of our covenants and related laws. In the breaches of contract cases that are the hope of the judiciary, our judiciary will work as an alternative dispute resolution in the real world, and I suppose that, in the most part, in consumer related cases of the type "this animation doesn't move my avatar the way it's supposed to do". In RL would we consider it as a breach of contract or a consumer complaint?
Will it be enough, following again Justices Soothsayer's post, a "tribal chieftain sitting on a stool in the middle of the Forum"? Well, the image of a kind of [i:p96wn6x1]Lord of the flies[/i:p96wn6x1] in [i:p96wn6x1]lederhosen[/i:p96wn6x1] or togas is very attractive and I think that will be enough to most of our cases.[/quote:p96wn6x1]
All of this is mere speculation, and quite unfounded. The judiciary that was designed very carefully, and debated at great length before being implimented, was designed to be far more than a tribal chieften dispensing rough justice to unsophisticated tribespeople about where their virtual goats may graze. It was designed to regulate the affairs of an entire and expanding virtual nation, which hopes to be able to bring enforcable contracts to SecondLife, among other things. The latest entry in [url=http://gwynethllewelyn.net:p96wn6x1]Gwyneth's 'blog[/url:p96wn6x1] suggests that it may also be very useful in the future in dealing with intellectual property violations.
The reality is that enforcement is exceptionally difficult between parties in SecondLife. If one can find them at all, and work out which legal system applies to a transaction, and then work out how to use that most probably foreign jurisdiction, and then find a way of enforcing its judgments, one will be very lucky indeed, and the cost of attempting to do so is likely to be thousands of times greater than the value of all but the most extremely high-value commercial transactions. All of this was remarked upon by Professor David Post, whose interview on BBC Radio 4's Law in Action [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/l ... m:p96wn6x1]programme[/url:p96wn6x1] a few weeks ago, in which he commented that he expected there to be legal systems developing in SecondLife very soon, lead to me being interviewed in the following week's programme about our legal system.
In a state of uncertainty (we cannot be sure exactly who will be using our legal system, and for what), it is always better to do as the Victorian civil engineers did, and over-engineer, rather than under-engineer. Why should our legal system not more resemble the Maidenhead viaduct than the first Tay bridge? It is far better that a legal system (or, indeed, [i:p96wn6x1]any[/i:p96wn6x1] system) exceeds present needs than that it transpires to be inadequate.
In any event, provided that there are, in fact, enough sufficiently skilled judges to fulfil the number of available vacancies, what complaint could possibly properly be made that the requirements are too stringent? As things stand, it looks like we have some very talented people interested in applying.
Finally, you write that being a judge needs to be "fun". "Fun" suggests something that is frivolous and lighthearted, but there are many more ways in which things can be rewarding than by being fun. Working as a judge in a judicial system of a virtual world will definitely be rewarding, in an intellectual sense, but not in a frivolous and light-hearted way. That does not mean, however, that those who are judges will not also be able to have fun engaging in other community activities in the CDS that are in part made possible by the stability created by a well-ordered and properly functioning judicial system.
[quote:p96wn6x1]At this moment, and having you recognized that one friend of yours is going to be an applicant (as you have announced it is a sign you have nothing to hide), I see the SC in a better position to evaluate the candidates. The anonymisation of the questionnaires doesn't prevent you from knowing, as you read the forms, who is American, who is British and who hasn't English as mother tongue, or even who is a determined person, if you know how he or she writes.[/quote:p96wn6x1]
That is why I have specifically asked the Scientific Council to replace all instances of US English spellings on the completed applications with international English spellings. This is easily done with a spell checker. As to people whose first language is not English, I have already addressed that issue in response to a post by Chicago above. What is ultimately a speculative possibility of me finding out, despite rigorous anonymisation, which of the questionairres has been submitted by the person whom I know in real life is a wholly insufficient basis upon which to make a radical change to the constitutional structure for the recruitment of the judiciary.
[quote:p96wn6x1]So you can imagine how am I concerned about a bias towards applicants from common law jurisdictions over civil law jurisdictions.[/quote:p96wn6x1]
I have explained before that, since the CDS [i:p96wn6x1]is[/i:p96wn6x1] a common law jurisdiction, by deliberate choice, for good, practical reasons, an understanding of how common law systems work is not a mindless prejudice, but a genuine qualification requirement. Of course, it is perfectly possible for a person who lives in a civil law country to learn how common law systems work, so a person is not precluded from being a judge in our nation by the mere fact of her or his country of origin.
[quote:p96wn6x1]One of the better things of living in a democracy is that it provides you some protection about people trying to fulfil their utopias. Aren't we going to set up some kind of judicial utopia in the CDS?[/quote:p96wn6x1]
We are trying to set up a working judiciary. A working judiciary is one in which the judges are sufficiently skilled. A nation whose judiciary is presided over by incompetent judges is positively dystopic.