Nomination Thread: Marokai Blue for Associate Justice

[Bacon King]

Please debate and ask questions of the nominee in this thread.

[MaxQue]

Why you follow the Constitution and not follow partisan ideas to make your decisions?

[Marokai Backbeat]

Why you follow the Constitution and not follow partisan ideas to make your decisions?

Would I?

Yes, of course. I believe I've demonstrated over my time that I can do my duties separate of my personal beliefs on something, and I will obviously follow the Constitution as I believe it to be written, like any other Justice would.

Legal issues should always be separate from personal opinion or biases.

[MaxQue]

Why you follow the Constitution and not follow partisan ideas to make your decisions?

Would I?

It is a thing which is happening when we begin to write a question and then, we change our mind and decide to ask another question.

Still, I would be interested to know the answer to the question with "why". Senators would learn about your juridical philosophy.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Well, I'm open to more specific questions, that's a little vague for me to answer, each case is individual afterall, but I can give something I sent to Lief when he asked my opinion of certain cases:

I'll edit it a little bit to get rid of the off-topic stuff and stick to my opinion of a few cases and the last court in general.

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I'll try to keep these as brief as possible so I don't run too long with this message.

I would have ruled in defense of the constitutionality of the law in question, and against Peter. This is actually something I followed very closely and got very upset by the ruling that was laid down by the court.

Not only does the Senate have the power to protect the public health, but it also has the authority to legislate against fraudulent organizations. Therapy for "repairing" sexuality is often psychologically abusive, and at times, physically abusive as well. Not only are these organizations causing potentially lasting damage, but they're also not one bit based in reality. There has been no scientific evidence that has shown sexual orientation can be changed or altered in anyway.

The freedom to practice one's religion, which is a flimsy excuse for most anything anyway, does not bestow the right of parents or any individual to harm others. By this ruling, it could be conceivable that parents could refuse life-saving treatment for diseases on the basis of their religion, thereby causing their child's death. This is simply unacceptable. Spade and Bullmoose simply disgusted me with this ruling, to be frank.

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Due to there actually being no ruling in this case, I'll explain my opinion of the surrounding legal issue below.

However, as for the standing requirement, I would never, ever, be in favor of such a thing. It's a pointless extra hoop to jump through that makes absolutely no sense to have in place in Atlasia.

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Unfortunately, I would rule in favor of Xahar in declaring the President does not have the power to pardon. The power to pardon is not mentioned in the Constitution in any way, and thus I would be duty bound to rule against the government here.

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I would have to rule alongside Spade on this matter, against Xahar's argument that he should be seated.

Spade's dissent, although unnecessarily wordy, was actually fantastically written and I don't think I could really improve upon it here, but to be brief, the Constitution and the CCJA very clearly, in my mind, say that bans from holding office and voting shall be uniform throughout all of Atlasia, regional offices and elections included.

Perhaps Justice Opebo was right to some degree, that the law could be more literally displayed, but I believe the intent of the procedure for which we sentence those to punishment are quite clearly uniform throughout all the country.

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It's been run well for the most part in a sense that there haven't been any royal screw-ups. But in my personal opinion, the court runs too slow and they created this absurd "standing" requirement that I criticized earlier.

There's really no need for cases to take a month or more if all you're going to do is dismiss the case. That's simply ridiculous. Atlasia may have complicated legal issues from time to time, but we don't have thousand-page laws or two hundred years of legal history. It is just a forum and a game, and though it should be taken seriously, many times legal issues can be solved rather swiftly.

The standing requirement, my final criticism that comes to mind, is something that's totally unnecessary in Atlasia. How can someone have standing on a fantasy game or prove some sort of measurable harm? Even if we run with it, all people will do is make up some sort of fantasy standing, which makes the whole standing requirement a needless waste of time. It only serves as an impediment for the sake of being an impediment. The issue in Purple State v. Lief and Xahar v. Lief could've been solved much sooner without that hoop to jump through.

In regard to Xahar v. Southeast and my comment about taking things too literally, I think sometimes it's important to remember the clear intent of a law, within reason. It's pretty obvious to anyone who doesn't either read the laws in question extremely literally or only has a selective interpretation, that it applied to all regions throughout Atlasia.

Only because it didn't specifically state it applied to regional offices, that's not enough in my option to allow someone to take regional offices through office-holding bans. In any reasonable evaluation of the intent of the wording in question, it's obvious (read Spade's dissent which I completely agree with) that it applies to everything.


Anyway, feel free to ask me more specific questions, it's a little too general to comment on right now.

[MaxQue]

No problem, my question wasn't good, to not say dumb. That was something like "Why a Justice should follow Constitution and not his personal ideas?", but that question is bad.

I am not thinking of any other question for now, appointee.

[Хahar 🤔]

There was another line of thought in the Xahar v. Southeast case that argued that the Senate had no authority to impose restrictions on regions. What are your feelings on that?

[Sam Spade]

I'm tempted to ask questions for my own amusement, but I think I'll pass.

[Marokai Backbeat]

There was another line of thought in the Xahar v. Southeast case that argued that the Senate had no authority to impose restrictions on regions. What are your feelings on that?

I don't think that holds any weight here, and the way you made that question is rather vague. "Imposed restrictions on regions." Any restrictions? Restrictions in regard to officeholding and criminal punishment?

The Constitution already sets the precedent of imposing officeholding restrictions that include the regions, such as not being able to hold two offices at the same time "at any level of government" or other clauses unrelated to elections that hold throughout any level of government. So yes, it's rather clear the Senate can set restrictions on regions, depending on the situation. This is fairly obvious.

Spade's dissent, which I expressed my agreement to earlier on, deals with the constitutionality of the part of the CCJA in question rather plainly:

Initially, I believe that these provisions of the CCJA were made under the power provided in Article I, Section 5, Clause 7, which provides that:

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The court has addressed and interpreted parts of this clause before.  Namely, in Peter v. Atlasia, we wrote that Fraud in our Constitution is to be defined as common-law fraud, namely:

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Clause 1 of the CCJA fits perfectly with the definition of Fraud provided here because the "impersonation" of "another Atlas Forum member" is a "knowing misrepresentation of the truth", specifically, of the injured poster's identity, whose purpose is solely to "induce" other members of the Forum to act in a certain way towards the Fraudster, most likely to their own "detriment."

Clause 2 of the CCJA does not fit quite as well with this definition, but an expected consequence of the actions forbidden clearly constitutes Fraud.  The "hacking" or "taking over control" of the injured poster's account can lead to the Fraudster either knowingly misrepresenting his identity as that of the injured poster or concealing the "material fact" that he is not the injured poster.  Such actions would induce other members of the Forum to act to their own "detriment" in the same manner as Clause 1.

Finally, in Peter v. Atlasia, we did not address whether Punishment constitutes criminal punishment, civil punishment or both.  I firmly believe, and my learned colleagues have assumed, that both criminal and civil punishment is covered under the language for the simple reason that Anglo-Saxon common law fraud is punishable both civilly and criminally.  Consequently, no such distinction should be found in the text of this Constitution. 

Thus, according to its plain language, Section 2, Clause 1 of the CCJA constitutes criminal punishment and can be upheld as a valid exercise of the power under Article I, Section 5, Clause 7.

[Franzl]

I have confidence in Marokai. I will certainly vote in favor.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Just bumping. Everyone is free to ask me questions, Senators and no, more specifically, Tmth, who seems to be on the fence on my confirmation, and I'd be happy to try and convince him I can do the job.

[Vepres]

Just bumping. Everyone is free to ask me questions, Senators and no, more specifically, Tmth, who seems to be on the fence on my confirmation, and I'd be happy to try and convince him I can do the job.

Tell us, Marokai, when did you stop beating up little girls?

[Marokai Backbeat]

Just bumping. Everyone is free to ask me questions, Senators and no, more specifically, Tmth, who seems to be on the fence on my confirmation, and I'd be happy to try and convince him I can do the job.

Tell us, Marokai, when did you stop beating up little girls?

Shows what you know, I don't go near girls.

[Alexander Hamilton]

Just bumping. Everyone is free to ask me questions, Senators and no, more specifically, Tmth, who seems to be on the fence on my confirmation, and I'd be happy to try and convince him I can do the job.

Tell us, Marokai, when did you stop beating up little girls?

Shows what you know, I don't go near girls.

Then you are clearly not qualified to be anywhere near the good Court.

[Vepres]

Just bumping. Everyone is free to ask me questions, Senators and no, more specifically, Tmth, who seems to be on the fence on my confirmation, and I'd be happy to try and convince him I can do the job.

Tell us, Marokai, when did you stop beating up little girls?

Shows what you know, I don't go near girls.

(I knew that actually), so you're admitting to beating up little boys then?

[Franzl]

There hasn't been any substantive debate in the last 24 hours.

I will be opening a final vote at noon Eastern time if nobody has any further questions.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A voice from the gallery would like to say something for no real reason. You're very active in Atlasian public life, run a newspaper and so on; I'd just like to say now (and to avoid trouble down the road) that you'll have to give that up while you're on the Court. Yeah, you probably know that anyway, but there's no harm in, you know.

[Franzl]

I hereby open the final vote on Marokai Blue for Associate Justice.

Please vote AYE, NAY or ABSTAIN.

[Franzl]

AYE

[afleitch]

Aye

[Purple State]

Just noting that this vote may not be certified until J. Spade is confirmed as Chief Justice.

[Hans-im-Glück]

AYE

[Hash]

aye

[Marokai Backbeat]

Abstain

[tmthforu94]

Aye