Public Discussion on the Supreme Court Cases (Avoid Cluttering Case Threads)

[Ebowed]

Remember people, if you post unreleted material in case threads, Ebowed might eat you.

I'm famished.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Mr. Chief Justice,

Should not the court make a ruling on the validity of having the same person serving as the both the prosecuting attorney before proceeding with the case? Does it not violate some structural imperitive for the judicial system to function even if it is not found in statute. I think the people best inclined to answer that question would be the justices themselves.

[Ebowed]

An entirely reasonable question, Mr. Senator, and indeed the circumstances of this lawsuit are quite novel, but absent a legal prohibition or any relevant precedent of having the same person representing the defendant and prosecution simultaneously, our only course of action is to see how this plays out and proceed from that point.  At this stage, we are inclined to give the legal representation the benefit of the doubt in terms of his objectivity.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

I'm inclined to see this as acceptable, especially in an unusual case like this.  Think of it as an intellectual argument - sometimes people like to play chess against themselves; in this case, BK is lawyering against himself.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You know it is real sad the situation we have with basically the Chief Justice so desperate for a case for his court, that he is willing to look past the tremendous and inexcusable insult done to the court by the incompetence of the previous administration's special prosecutor. It is barbaric, BARBARIC!!!!

FOR THE LOVE OF EBOWED, GET THIS POOR MAN A CASE, HERE!!!!!

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Enjoying your feast of fresh meat, Mr. Chief Justice Ebowed?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I am bumping this to hopefully head the chit chat off at the pass. Obviously, I don't intend to discuss my own case here in this thread though.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You know it is a really a bitch to copy and paste something out of a word processing document and not have it come out as a jumbled pile of text. I never expected that it would ever take me forty minutes on a copy and paste job, just to get the indents and stuff somewhat reasonable. Even with that effort, the result is rather trashy compared to how it looks in Word.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

And the AG just gave a perfect example of why you shouldn't file a motion before your opponent has fully laid out his lawsuit... Smackdown!

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I look forward to your response, My dear Attorney General.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Crying sakes. I'll only say this - I am glad football season is over, both NCAA and pro, if the dear senator is to make me pick that apart this weekend. My brief will beat the deadline.

I know... that thing was a monster.  That's just cruel...

[Ebowed]

It is quite the well written and well presented brief, no doubt.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

PMs Going Down: The Best thing that could have possibly happened for the Supreme Court.

Though some things might be better behind closed doors, I think the decision on whether or not to grant cert is one thing that could be made public. Provided of course we maintain the independence of the Court by not adopting term limits, otherwise the situation changes.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

It's interesting what's going on in Atlasia -vs- The Former Pacific.  If those who sought to abolish the Pacific government attempt to act as respondents, they end up destroying the logic of their own case.  If nobody responds, the Federal Government should get a default judgment.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Just to keep you all update, I'm pretty sure we will be posting our decision tomorrow.

There are only one or two minor details I want to confirm first. We're in very different time zones though.

NO EXCUSES FROM YOU NOW!!!

Also, I trust Ebowed will actually be posting his own opinion this time. With three seperate rulings the previous case would have gone down easier (for me, everyone else would be having to carefully read to figure out what was tossed and what wasn't. It would be just pure torture ).

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The lawsuit needs dismissed as fricolous. Seatown accepted the result when he chose to run in and lose the recall election. He forfeited standing.

Re: Standing Requirement

A question has been raised regarding Bgwah's standing to sue in this matter. Let it be known that we have voted to overrule the standing requirement set in Purple State v. Lief.

We feel the standing requirement to sue is an unnecessary waste of time, and only creates needless obstacles to doing justice. It is an incredibly time consuming procedural hoop that doesn't really make much sense inside Atlasia when consideration is given to the fact that Atlasia is what it is.

But most of all, the standing requirement is entirely without precedent until very very recently, whether that precedent be in many past decisions of the Court or the Constitution. Not only does the majority of the Court believe that the standing requirement is a practical mistake, but it is a legal one.

Justice Marokai Blue

Joined in this short opinion by Justice Opebo.

Remind what midnight session you managed to slip through on a voice vote unbeknownst to most of the body?

A very sensible ruling by the court.  It is the AG's job to prosecute violations of the law.  To say that he must be directly affected by the violation- i.e. "have standing"- prevents him from doing his job.

In this situation he is affected because the federal consitution was in question. If still not so then, in that case, at most the precendent should have been modified, not thrown out. This opens the door to some pretty nasty and unforseen, unintended consequences.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I mean, I hate to say I told y'all so, but...

The whole "it's 2 regions but now it's 1 region but it's really 2 regions" plan seems oddly reminiscent of the Atlasian-Canadian Common Market Agreement. Hell, the main motivation for me to see that one through was for people to be able to live in Canada, but apparently we still can't even get that enforced because of all the "careful considerations" that went into it. I'd hate for this to end up like that. How sure can we be that it won't? It only takes one court case to find out, especially when there are vague concepts like "accord" (we could at least use the wording from the Article I Section 7 clause, which I could argue is not even applicable here).

To be honest, mine could just have easily have covered this as problem resulting in the case just as well:

This bill has enough votes to pass, Senators have 24 hours to change their votes.


Since it won't affect the outcome, I am going to vote Nay to express concerns similar to those of shua's. Setting aside the pre-agreement/post-agreement but pre-implementation issue, I do think it is a mistake to not have placed some conditions on this.

So NAY

One of the conditions could have stated the "specific issues".

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

One benefit of having Torie as Justice is that the process is far more "developed" shall we say as a result. Considering how few cases we have, this is hardly a bad thing to say the least.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Bgwah's appetite is more ferocious then Ebowed's and Oakvale'll cut ya. I'd recommend not cluttering up the case threads.


So freedom of speech versus hate crimes legislation. I am taking stakes, if anyone wants to get cut in before the fight begins.

[Poirot]

There is a case following a tie vote on for the nomination of a Vice-President. The Senate PPT broke the tie. The case is about if the PPT has the right to break the tie or not.

If there is a situtation of two groups of senators that can't agree or a group of five who doesn't want to nominate a VP, would it mean there is no VP for the rest of the term? Maybe it would show the VP role is not that important.

Should there be a tie-breaking mechanism for VP nomination to resolve the issue? If the PPT can't break the tie, should the President break the tie? The VP breaks the tie in the Senate (maybe under the hat of President of Senate) and he is someone picked by the President, they run and campaign together.  If there is no VP to break a tie maybe the President could have the power to break it in this special circumstance.

What will happen if the Court decides the PPT is not allowed to break a tie and doesn't say who can break it. We are in paralysis.         

[DemPGH]

This is the proper place for discussion of court cases, and we could actually have good discussions here, probably. In any event, currently going on is Averroës vs. PPT TNF.

This all could have been avoided if Windjammer wasn't a silly goose.

I'd like to remind everyone that what actually precipitated this quandary was that five senators blocked an admittedly qualified candidate for Vice President, following Windjammer's resignation, for no other reason than party affiliation.

Indeed, here it be.

It's interesting, because the Constitution says this!

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I don't know, a good attorney might be able to sue the Senate based on that and the admissions made, which I know I largely kept. It's at least an admittedly egregious event.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You would have to prove that each of the five voted for the reasons you stated. I never made any statements endorsing a political motivation for the reasons behind my vote.

Also, that merely guarantees the right to be considered, candidacy does not mean election or confirmation. If that interpretation would be upheld the parties would be illegal.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Thank you. Does the President of the Senate have any listed Constitutional powers other than breaking ties, and presiding over impeachment hearings? Those are the only two items that I can find so far. The issue is to fathom here is just what it is that an acting President of the Senate does as a Constitutional function, if that person cannot break ties.

Listed specifically no, but indirectly through the power of the Senate to create its own rules, his job is also to administer and perform the duties listed in those rules.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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This sounds like something I would say. It is why under the section on transitory agreements in the OSPR it is stipulated that the votes of the Senator's successors displace that of their predecessors. The seats are no indistinguishable, each represents a specific constituency, especially a regional Senator like TNF or myself.

[Poirot]

In the case accusing Lebron Fitzgerald of doing something on IRC, it doesn't surprise me there is no written proof taken at the time it happened because I doubt the chat mod are always looking at IP. I had a personal experience in IRC. A chat mod, for some unknown reason, decided I was Simfan and banned me. I imagine my IP can't be mistaken with Simfan's. Also using the name of other Atlasian and impersonating them was something that happened, or just entering and using a name and then keep changing it to another. So I think there is a reasonable doubt about the identity.

Also from the tiny bit of conversation shown, it doesn't look like there is pressure to a voter to go quickly edit your ballot (with the malicious intent to force editing after the deadline). It is more an opinion like: I think your ballot will not count because you did this thing.

I hope there is no banning of people if during a conversation one tell the other, I think your ballot is invalid because you edited after 10 minutes and the real limit is 20 minutes.

The voter is not a newcomer. He probably knows you can't edit your ballot after a few minutes. I haven't seen a study of time showing when this happen in relation to the vote and the editing period.

The information given in the few lines shown is not correct but maybe it's not deliberate and certainly not done "in order to prevent casting of a valid ballot". There is no asking a voter to edit a ballot after the allowed period.