Cris vs. TNF

[Senator Cris]

Mr. Chief Judicial Officer, I'm filing a lawsuit against Midwest Governor TNF.

On June 24, Governor TNF issued some executive orders:

Executive Order #1

All previous executive orders issued by previous Governors of the Midwest are hereby rescinded.

Executive Order #2

All Midwestern government bodies are henceforth not to cooperate with federal agents of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement insofar as their cooperation would result in the deportation of an undocumented worker. Undocumented workers are to be granted safe haven in the Midwest, which shall treat every human being as a human being and no one as an 'illegal' person or persons.

Executive Order #3

All government documents printed by the Most Serene Republic of the Midwest shall henceforth be printed in English and Spanish.

Executive Order #4

All persons currently incarcerated for non-violent offenses (excepting 'white collar' criminals) shall have their sentences commuted to time served and shall be released from prison no later than July 31, 2015.

Executive Order #5

Henceforth, no employer that is (or is not) party to a labor dispute, may 'lockout' workers during contract negotiations (or for any other reason). Doing so shall result in a fine of no less than $250,000 per offense (adjusted annually for inflation), with an additional $500,000 fine for each day workers are not allowed to work on account of the intransigence of the company in question.

Executive Order #6

No police officer employed by the Most Serene Republic of the Midwest be utilized in such a way as to break a strike or attack a picket line, nor may police officers infiltrate labor unions or political organizations, for any purpose. Violations of this order shall result in a fine of no less than $25,000 (adjusted annually for inflation), termination of employment, and forfeiture of any right to a pension or other compensation otherwise owed to the officer in question.

Executive Order #7

The Most Serene Republic of the Midwest shall partner with organized labor to establish union-run hiring halls in impoverished areas. These hiring halls shall provide training and education to job seekers and shall allow for the fullest employment of those seeking employment on useful public projects, with an emphasis on employing persons of color, women, youth (persons under 25), and other historically disadvantaged groups.

Executive Order #8

The Midwestern Department of Internal Affairs is hereby directed to conduct an intensive study on segregation in the Midwest and present said report to the Governor and the members of the Althing no later than December 31, 2015, as well as present potential remedies to address social segregation.

Executive Order #9

The five (5) hour day is hereby established for all workers employed by the Most Serene Republic of the Midwest. Upon the expiration of existing contracts between the Most Serene Republic of the Midwest and private service providers, a condition of any future contracts enacted must be the observance of a 5 hour workday, with wage adjustments upward to guarantee no loss in pay for workers on contract. Likewise, the wages of regional workers shall adjust to guarantee pay equivalent to existing payrates under a shorter workday system.

Executive Order #10

The Department of Internal Affairs shall shut down any existing database that provides information to the public pertaining to the 'sex offender' status of any person, and destroy such information effective immediately. All sex offenders that have been released from prison and served their time shall no longer be cataloged into public databases or tracked on account of a previous conviction resulting in jail time that has been served. Police 'sting' operations directed at capturing 'sex offenders' via the use of entrapment are hereby prohibited, and the arrest and detention of persons for the viewing of any currently prohibited pornographic material shall likewise be prohibited. The last clause of this executive order shall not be interpreted as interfering with existing prohibitions on the production of said material, which shall continue to result in all appropriate and established legal penalties.

But according to the Midwest constitution, the Governor can't do this.

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Best regards,
Cris.

[TNF]

My lawyer, Bacon King, has been notified of this suit and will provide my defense in this case.

[Bacon King]

Your honor, the Governor's case is simple - it is clear that my client's office implicitly grants him the authority to issue executive orders.

The argument of Mr. Cris is that the Midwest Constitution says that Governor TNF, as the region's executive official, cannot issue executive orders. However, that's not true. The Midwest Constitution says absolutely nothing about executive orders; it neither prohibits nor enumerates such authority.

Another Atlasian executive is the President, who also issues executive orders. In fact, it is an established precedent that the President can issue executive orders, because numerous court cases have contested the contents of various executive orders before the Supreme Court, and not one of them has ever declared that the President can't make them. Where does the President get this authority? Not from the Constitution!

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Please note that it says absolutely nothing about executive orders. The President has no explicit Constitutional authority to issue them, but the Supreme Court has implicitly accepted his ability to issue them countless times over the preceding decade. In an identical manner, the Governor of your fine region can also issue executive orders without any Constitutional language that explicitly grants him such authority. It is simply common sense that the executive can make orders and call them executive orders; it would be impossible to run a government without them.

To summarize: if this court rules that Governor TNF can't issue executive orders, then it is also ruling that the Atlasian President himself cannot issue executive orders. It would be incredibly presumptuous for this court to overturn an entire decade of Atlasian judicial precedence.

[Dereich]

I was planning to file this lawsuit myself but was slow on the uptake. If it's improper to be posted otherwise, please consider this an amicus brief for the plaintiff.



Your honor, the Governor's case rests on a false premise: that the Governor of the Midwest is the chief executive of the region and thus has the power to issue executive orders. Under the current Midwestern constitution, this isn't the case.

What are the Governor's functions? According to the constitution, they are the following:

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From this its clear that the title of "Governor" is a bit of a misnomer: they don't really "govern" at all. The Governor of the Midwest serves a clearly subordinate role to the Althing: they assist that body by giving them advice, act as their spokesman, have full hugging power and ensure that their acts are constitutional. The only concrete power granted to them (the power to review bills) is closer to judicial review than an executive veto. The only executive functions the Midwestern Governor serves are acting as a ceremonial head of state, making temporary appointments to the Althing and opening election booths, none of which would grant any overarching executive authority.

Where does executive power lie? The only mention in the constitution is here:

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It would seem that writers of this constitution intended executive authority to rest with the Althing and not the Governor. The executive should be able to issue executive orders, but in the Midwest that authority clearly lies with the Althing and not the Governor. The comparison with the President doesn't hold water; the President's authority to issue executive order comes from the line vesting them executive power. There is no such line granting either explicit or even implicit power to the Governor in our Constitution. Therefore, it would be improper to uphold these executive orders and your honor should find for the plaintiff.