On the necessity and meaning of a "professional judicia

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michelmanen
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Post by michelmanen »

Beathan,

Stop trying to impose your agenda on CARE or labelling us in accordance with your partisan interests. It really is a very transparent attempt at manipulation - not to mention intellectually dishonest.

What you say or do not say about us is really not worth much at all...

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Post by Beathan »

Michel --

I am not trying to impose my agenda on CARE. I am trying to understand what CARE is actually about. CARE does not make this process of understanding very easy.

Once I understand what CARE is about, I want to look for links between our mutual agendas so that we can engage in a conversation based on our mutual interests and goals. So far the Simplicity Party has had very fruitful conversations with the DPU and CSDF on areas of shared concern and overlapping goals. I think that this building of bridges between parties, especially in the face of what will probably be a coalition government, is extremely important.

So far CARE's statements seem to be so much social science puffery, filtered through a funnel of business-speak, to result in thousands of confusing words that combine into an unholy mixture of business and social science jargon. When translated to real, meaningful speech, CARE's manifesto, policies, and all related posts mean almost nothing. Even when I think I see meaning, and try to grasp it, you claim that I do not get it and should not try.

Perhaps I am shadow-boxing. Perhaps CARE is a chimera. Perhaps, if these things are true, no one should vote for CARE.

Beathan

Let's keep things simple enough to be fair, substantive enough to be effective, and insightful enough to be good.
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Warning

Post by Patroklus Murakami »

Ash

Your last two posts were in violation of our forum posting guidelines, link [url=http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtop ... 6:s172ho1p]here[/url:s172ho1p] for reference.

Specifically, by posting the following:"This is another one of your countless deliberate lies." and "If you honestly think that, given all that you know perfectly well that I have written in detail on all of those topics, that actually is a logical conclusion of any of my arguments, then you are even stupider than I thought, and that is saying something. " you contravened the following section of our posting guidelines:

[quote:s172ho1p]3.5: When disagreeing with another poster make sure that your response takes issue with the arguments rather than with the person behind them. Abuse and personal attacks will not be tolerated[/quote:s172ho1p]

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Post by Dianne »

Just to throw an aside into this wordy and circumlocutory debate...

My take on this whole issue is that Ashcroft is right about the desirability of a "Professional" Judiciary within the bounds described, [b:73ruqsmg]but only if we are talking about RL[/b:73ruqsmg], not SL.

Ashcroft, you are to me, the exact kind of smart legal mind I would like to have on my side if I was ever to be before a court in RL, but I think your arguments completely misunderstand the medium of SecondLife and the idea of virtual people in a virtual world.

IMO if the only way we can get justice in a virtual world is by recourse to RL professionals then there is simply no point to attempting it. My focus, and my interest in Second Life and in virtual government in general is to have "real" [i:73ruqsmg]virtual[/i:73ruqsmg] government and "real" [i:73ruqsmg]virtual[/i:73ruqsmg] justice. The minute we have to fall back on RL personages and RL qualifications, we have lost the game in my view.

The whole point of the CDS (to me), is to evolve a government and a justice system *organically* out of the realities of our [i:73ruqsmg]virtual[/i:73ruqsmg] existence as avatars in a [i:73ruqsmg]virtual[/i:73ruqsmg] world. Otherwise, what is the point really? In that case, we would be better off to simply say that everyone that joins the CDS must reveal their RL identities and deal with things on the RL side. It would certainly make things simpler.

If a "professional" justice system in the CDS requires that we search for RL personalities with proven RL qualifications, then it's a complete non-starter for me. Not only that, IMO it is absolute [b:73ruqsmg]poison[/b:73ruqsmg] for the whole project in that it turns SL into just a low-grade game-like extension to a group of RL organisations and individuals, instead of a world of it's own. I would leave the CDS (and likely quit SL) , the very next day should such a system be instated.

I would also encourage all the supporters of "professional" justice systems to broaden their horizons to include other societies than simply modern and western ones.

Neufreistadt is a Medieval city, Colonia Nova a Roman one. There were many forms of "justice" that were perceived as just by peoples of those eras that we would not necessarily look on as such today. A medieval trial by a council of "town elders" (much like the SC hearings on Ulrika), is not necessarily "unjust" simply because it does not use the elaborate legal system of modern day Great Britain or USA. Gorean slavery is similarly not "unjust" if it takes place in a society where all the members of that society agree that it's a fair way to organise said society.

As silly as it might seem to people today, even a trial by contest of strength as was often practiced by early tribal societies, was "just" to them and thought to be quite a reasonable approach to solving the problem of guilt and innocence.

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Post by Ashcroft Burnham »

[quote="Dianne":1j13jqm7]My take on this whole issue is that Ashcroft is right about the desirability of a "Professional" Judiciary within the bounds described, [b:1j13jqm7]but only if we are talking about RL[/b:1j13jqm7], not SL.

Ashcroft, you are to me, the exact kind of smart legal mind I would like to have on my side if I was ever to be before a court in RL, but I think your arguments completely misunderstand the medium of SecondLife and the idea of virtual people in a virtual world.

IMO if the only way we can get justice in a virtual world is by recourse to RL professionals then there is simply no point to attempting it. My focus, and my interest in Second Life and in virtual government in general is to have "real" [i:1j13jqm7]virtual[/i:1j13jqm7] government and "real" [i:1j13jqm7]virtual[/i:1j13jqm7] justice. The minute we have to fall back on RL personages and RL qualifications, we have lost the game in my view.[/quote:1j13jqm7]

Two points: first of all, the only virtual thing about SecondLife is the physical environment. The people, the relationships between them, and all of the emergent properties of those relationships (including justice) are real, and largely unaffected by the means of interaction. Merely because the means of interaction between people includes a simulated physical environment does not mean that wholly different considerations arise in the relations between people, or in how law or legal systems should work. The differences are in identification and enforcement, not in what it takes to achieve justice or what sorts of rules or procedures work. As Gwyneth has said many times in the context of human rights, SecondLife is just a means of interaction of real people; why should different considerations apply, when they do not to telephone conversations or e-mails?

Second of all, everybody seems to be ignoring me when I state that it was never intended that only people with first-life qualifications should ever administer the legal system: it would start with first-life professionals, who would bring their skills and expertise, but, as expressly provided for in the Judiciary Act, there would be a programme of legal education that would mean that the system would have in-world educated legal professionals, who need not be lawyers in the first life (but who would, of course, have to have the right sort of mind to be capable of being lawyers). There never was any attempt at, or any means of, checking whether any given person had any first-life legal qualification. The judicial qualification requirements tested understanding, knowledge (of the CDS legal system) analytic skill, integrity, pragmatism and fairness.

[quote:1j13jqm7]As silly as it might seem to people today, even a trial by contest of strength as was often practiced by early tribal societies, was "just" to them and thought to be quite a reasonable approach to solving the problem of guilt and innocence.[/quote:1j13jqm7]

Would you really think that that is a fair way of resolving a dispute? Would you like your local courts to be run that way? If not, then there is no reason that it ought be applied in SecondLife either: justice is still justice, whether people are interacting through a virtual world or not.

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Post by Dianne »

[quote="Ashcroft Burnham":8g89rgpm]Two points: first of all, the only virtual thing about SecondLife is the physical environment. The people, the relationships between them, and all of the emergent properties of those relationships (including justice) are real, and largely unaffected by the means of interaction. [/quote:8g89rgpm]I am not sure if I agree with this. We are in fact [i:8g89rgpm]simulated[/i:8g89rgpm] characters in a simulated environment, not just real people walking around in a simulated environment. Some of us are not even human. I met an alt of one of our citizens the other day that was an old television set!

We are as Gwyn points out legal entities or pseudonymous extensions of RL people, but those entities are not the same as the real people. In fact, it is the differences between "real" people and avatars that are the real interesting bit, and those same differences that cause all the problems and make the project challenging to me. The very fact that we can also be multiple (have alts), throws a big monkey wrench into what would normally be easily simulated situations for example. [quote="Ashcroft Burnham":8g89rgpm]Second of all, everybody seems to be ignoring me when I state that it was never intended that only people with first-life qualifications should ever administer the legal system: it would start with first-life professionals, who would bring their skills and expertise, but, as expressly provided for in the Judiciary Act, there would be a programme of legal education that would mean that the system would have in-world educated legal professionals, who need not be lawyers in the first life (but who would, of course, have to have the right sort of mind to be capable of being lawyers). There never was any attempt at, or any means of, checking whether any given person had any first-life legal qualification. The judicial qualification requirements tested understanding, knowledge (of the CDS legal system) analytic skill, integrity, pragmatism and fairness. [/quote:8g89rgpm]I wasn't aware that you were okay with non RL professionals serving in roles, but it hardly seems to matter in regards the plans you have set up. You say yourself above that it would "start with RL professionals," so for me, that is sort of the end of it as well. I am unclear how if a legal system started that way it would ever devolve into having non-RL professionals in it. [quote="Dianne":8g89rgpm]As silly as it might seem to people today, even a trial by contest of strength as was often practiced by early tribal societies, was "just" to them and thought to be quite a reasonable approach to solving the problem of guilt and innocence.[/quote:8g89rgpm][quote="Ashcroft Burnham":8g89rgpm]Would you really think that that is a fair way of resolving a dispute? Would you like your local courts to be run that way? If not, then there is no reason that it ought be applied in SecondLife either: justice is still justice, whether people are interacting through a virtual world or not.[/quote:8g89rgpm]My point here was that it is "fair" and "just" to the people in those cultures at that time.

If I was a member of a tribal group that had this tradition I would probably think this was the most sensible way to decide who was guilty. To suppose otherwise is to suppose that the culture and the people in question set up an unjust, foolish system on purpose. What reason would they have for that? All anthropological studies I have read on the topic are of the opinion that such trials were conceived of by the people of the time because they honestly thought it was the best way to go. All cultures and societies think [i:8g89rgpm]their[/i:8g89rgpm] way is the best way IMO. They don't sit down and say to themselves [i:8g89rgpm]"... well what would be the wackiest, most unfair way of deciding who's guilty here?" [/i:8g89rgpm]

Personally, I would be okay with a "trial by strength" it might even be fun. :)

Unfortunately I don't think SL is set up for it. I happened to engage in an SL mud wrestling match with a friend just yesterday, and although it was HUGE fun, who won was more happenstance than anything else. Thus it would likely be a poor justice system to pit avatars against each other in a physical contest in SL.

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Post by Ashcroft Burnham »

[quote="Dianne":295fx8le]I am not sure if I agree with this. We are in fact [i:295fx8le]simulated[/i:295fx8le] characters in a simulated environment, not just real people walking around in a simulated environment. Some of us are not even human. I met an alt of one of our citizens the other day that was an old television set!

We are as Gwyn points out legal entities or pseudonymous extensions of RL people, but those entities are not the same as the real people. In fact, it is the differences between "real" people and avatars that are the real interesting bit, and those same differences that cause all the problems and make the project challenging to me. The very fact that we can also be multiple (have alts), throws a big monkey wrench into what would normally be easily simulated situations for example.[/quote:295fx8le]

An avatar is not a substitute [i:295fx8le]person[/i:295fx8le]: it is merely a substitute [i:295fx8le]body[/i:295fx8le]. The [i:295fx8le]mind[/i:295fx8le] is not virtual: it is real. The bodily aspects are virtualised, but the mental aspects are not. It is the mental aspects that are the important ones, and that are the relevant ones as far as law and justice are concerned. We are all human, even if we choose to be represented in a virtual world by a household appliance avatar: an avatar, after all, is a representation of a real person, not a whole person unto itself.

[quote:295fx8le]I wasn't aware that you were okay with non RL professionals serving in roles, but it hardly seems to matter in regards the plans you have set up. You say yourself above that it would "start with RL professionals," so for me, that is sort of the end of it as well. I am unclear how if a legal system started that way it would ever devolve into having non-RL professionals in it.[/quote:295fx8le]

By training - there was to be established a programme of legal education. People would have been able to obtain in-world legal qualifications. And why ought those who have specialist knowledge and skill in the first life be excluded from bringing the benefits of that knowledge and skill to SecondLife in establishing a legal system?

[quote:295fx8le]My point here was that it is "fair" and "just" to the people in those cultures at that time. [/quote:295fx8le]

There is a crucial logical flaw there: a person or set of people believing something to be just is not the same as something actually being just. A person or set of people can be wrong about whether something is just or not. Whether something is just cannot depend merely on whether people think that it is just, or else one descends into incoherent circularity: what are people thinking that it means for something to be just? If they are merely thinking that other people are thinking that something is just, then those other people would have to be thinking that being just meant that other people were thinking it was just, and so on ad infinitum. If other people thinking are something just in a way other than the the mere fact of believing that others so think, then it is possible that the person might be either right or wrong in thinking that the thing that he or she thinks has that property which he or she calls justice.

[quote:295fx8le]If I was a member of a tribal group that had this tradition I would probably think this was the most sensible way to decide who was guilty. To suppose otherwise is to suppose that the culture and the people in question set up an unjust, foolish system on purpose. [/quote:295fx8le]

That is not the point: the point is that they genuinely, albeit mistakenly, believe it to be just. In fact, it is unjust. It is always better to have a system that is genuinely just. Having a system that one falsely believes is just, whereas in fact it is unjust, is no better than having a system that people know is unjust (and potentially worse, since the defect is less likely to be cured).

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Re: Warning

Post by Ashcroft Burnham »

[quote="Patroklus Murakami":3vbvqifr]Ash

Your last two posts were in violation of our forum posting guidelines, link [url=http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtop ... 6:3vbvqifr]here[/url:3vbvqifr] for reference.

Specifically, by posting the following:"This is another one of your countless deliberate lies." and "If you honestly think that, given all that you know perfectly well that I have written in detail on all of those topics, that actually is a logical conclusion of any of my arguments, then you are even stupider than I thought, and that is saying something. " you contravened the following section of our posting guidelines:

[quote:3vbvqifr]3.5: When disagreeing with another poster make sure that your response takes issue with the arguments rather than with the person behind them. Abuse and personal attacks will not be tolerated[/quote:3vbvqifr][/quote:3vbvqifr]

Please explain why warnings have not been issued to Beathan for his repeated and wilful violation of this guideline, for the numerous times that he has dishonestly claimed that I am, variously, insane, a megalomaniac, and have an unhealthy and irrational preoccupation with procedures?

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Re: Warning

Post by Desmond Shang »

[quote="Ashcroft Burnham":32cqv3yv]Please explain why warnings have not been issued to Beathan for his repeated and wilful violation of this guideline, for the numerous times that he has dishonestly claimed that I am, variously, insane, a megalomaniac, and have an unhealthy and irrational preoccupation with procedures?[/quote:32cqv3yv]

*dares a ridiculously risky bit of humour*

An imperfect justice system perhaps?

*runs out giggling in the most juvenile manner...*

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Post by Publius Crabgrass »

[quote="Dianne":5b5aq6yt]I happened to engage in an SL mud wrestling match with a friend just yesterday...[/quote:5b5aq6yt]
You mean that isn't the purpose of the CDS discsussion forum? :D

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Post by Claude Desmoulins »

Ash points out, and I very much believe him, that there was an intention to create a legal education system so that eventually the CDS could grow its own legal community. I wonder of this didn't break down because the decision was made. in our eagerness to have operating courts to staff the judiciary first and develop the legal ed system later. This almost inevitably created a circumstance where the standard for participation was such that it could only be met initially by those with RL legal education and training. Even had the legal ed system in CDS come to pass, you would have still been left with an almost caste system dividing those with RL training from those who were legally trained only in the CDS.

The notion of "RL expertise not required" has always been very resonant to me. Based on my RL credentials I am unlikely to become a legislator, but here they didn't matter, and my ideas were allowed to stand or fall on their own merit. That capability for reinvention is a powerful part of our shared virtual experience and one I am loathe to lose.

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Post by Beathan »

Claude --

I think that Ash's education proposal broke down because the level of expertise he requires is not feasible without RL training. Ash envisions a full modern legal system. The education that would be involved in training SL avs for roles in this system would mirror RL legal training. Further, Ash's legal system -- and his ideas of the qualification for positions in it and the training for it -- were loaded with ideological commitments that were not universally shared, or even generally understood.

For instance, Ash is committed to a legal system based on principles of legal positivism ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_positivism ), to the exclusion and outright rejection of other theories, such as those of Ronald Dworkin ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Dworkin ). Ash was painfully clear on this -- and equally clear on his refusal to allow Dworkin's ideas of law as principled interpretation rather than some reified rule-system any place in the system. The education system Ashcroft proposed would reflect Ashcroft's own prejudices, just as his qualification exam did.

In fact, on analysis, legal positivism is not compatible with the egalitarian and libertarian commitments of the CDS community. Dworkin's jurisprudential theories are a far better fit.

The devil is in the details.

Further, it is clear that while Ash purports to allow for general participation of all citizens in real roles in the judicial system (even as judges and advocates) without regard to their RL credentials, the qualification process in fact belies this claim. Ash is not really allowing open membership of anyone competent in our relatively simple and straightforward legal system (a level of competence that requires far, far less specialized training than RL lawyers, solicitors and barristers have). Rather, he was insisting on hypercompetence (from a perspective of second life) by only recognizing as competent those who were competent in RL. Thus, Ash's qualification was not "anyone who can think clearly, accurately and fairly about CDS law and apply that law to specific facts" -- rather it was, "GDL: Graduate Diploma in Law, or equivalent." He places great weight on the "or equivalent" as if it opened the egalitarian door of inclusiveness. It doesn't.

Beathan

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Post by Diderot Mirabeau »

[quote="Ashcroft Burnham":2i3xmech]it was never intended that only people with first-life qualifications should ever administer the legal system: it would start with first-life professionals, who would bring their skills and expertise, but, as expressly provided for in the Judiciary Act, there would be a programme of legal education that would mean that the system would have in-world educated legal professionals, who need not be lawyers in the first life (but who would, of course, have to have the right sort of mind to be capable of being lawyers).[/quote:2i3xmech]
On "the right sort of mind":
[quote="Ashcroft Burnham":2i3xmech]As I have explained, because this is an emergant system, all judges sitting on any cases are likely to have to forge new precedents in ways that, in many cases, will be quite unpredictable at the stage that cases are allocated to judges. Our judges need to be more qualified, intellectually, at least (although not as much in experience, especially since there has not been very much in the way of our legal system to experience), than many junior judges in real-life jurisdictions for this reason. [/quote:2i3xmech]
Plus around a thousand posts illuminating a very one-sided approach to defining the concept of reasoning.

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Post by Jon Seattle »

This may get tomatoes thrown at me, but its an interesting speculative idea. I may have not thought through all the consequences, but for what it is worth here it is.

Second life has many, and will continue to have many small virtual communities with different organizational structures. The variety and onging evolution of those communities is something that makes SL interesting. Most, like us, have just a handful of citizen-citizen disputes each year that cannot be solved through mediation. (We have several commercial disputes at the moment , but all of these involve non-citizens and heck if I know what we can do about those.)

Even if we did have full blown court procedures it is not clear to me that we could ever really support five or ten or twenty lawyers. And as a variation on the old saying goes, idle hands may start meddling in public policy. I strongly believe that designing public policy should be the job of elected representatives, with the SC just making sure these are consistent with the constitution and UHDR.

Why not start an organization that provides highly professional judicial services to SL communities on contract?

1. This might help address the dis-economies of scale. You could concentrate more cases in a single legal system and have more work for participating professionals.

2. Subscribing communities could gain the advantage of being part of a single legal system with other communities. This would open the door for settling disputes across community boundaries.

3. Communities could decide if the principles of the legal system fit their values and needs. As a provider you could even offer a range of different models of justice and judicial philosophies as products. (This would make it harder to solve cross-community disputes, but you could search for good models for resolving those.)

4. You could offer a service that identified and tracked griefers and other violators who moved from community to community. In other words a "police" option.

5. My guess is that RL organizations who establish a presence in SL with significant resident populations might be very interested in such services. Especially if they were able to link in an effective way with their RL legal departments if that became necessary.

So why not go commercial (or non-profit) with this?

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Post by Diderot Mirabeau »

I can definitely see the feasibility of this thinking, Jon. If I'm not mistaken your proposal mirrors in many ways what I understood to be one of the proposals advanced in the "Local Government Study Group". I'm not sure though how far this group will be able to carry anything if it gets bogged down in a "I am the sole arbitrator of reason" vs" "We don't like your style" debate, which doesn't seem unlikely considering its composition.

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