NationStates Jolt Archive

So, I got to thinking, why don't we have an International Court? I mean, it seems like a vital organ in the International Government, doesn't it? Along with kind of a Senate thing, but I'll get to that later. Anyway, I am going to propose that we have an International Court of Law. Now, for clarification, the Court will not by any means contradict laws being passed by the General Assembly. We have moderators for that. Such a proposal would be illegal. So I'm walking a very fine line here. IF THERE IS ANYTHING wrong; should it violate rules, have poor wording, superfluous info, anything left out, anything at all, tell me. Please. Completely scrutinize this thing:

Description:
In an effort to enforce UN Laws in member nations to protect their citizen's rights, the General Assembly hereby recognizes a new committee in the body of the UN government, the International Court of Law. In times of conflict, the Court shall serve as an unbiased moderator, in times of tyranny the Court shall make peace and restore justice, and in times of uncertainty the Court shall serve as an obstinate foundry of order.

Article I
Purposes:
Maintaining international peace, justice, and security
Developing healthy international relationships
Achieving cooperation in obtaining solutions for international problems

Article II
Principals:
Equality among all nations is to be held sacrosanct
Adhering to International Law is to be an utmost priority
War and/or violence shall be the last resort for resolving disputes

Article III
Every party, nation, or person that is bound by International Law and is accused of violating it shall be tried justly in the Court

Article IV
Judges, members of the Court, shall be:
Nominated and inspected before voted on
Elected based on their ability to uphold International Law and fulfill their duty as judge (Articles I and II)
21 in number
Active for no more than 11 years
Unable to engage in business
Given substantial allowances
Equal, being the same in value, influence, etc
Impeached only if the majority of other Judges agree that the actions of accused Judge intentionally violated Articles I and/or II

Article V
Proceedings shall be conducted in the national language(s) of both the accuser and accused parties

Article VI
Notice is required in advance of Court Proceedings

Article VII
All proceedings shall be documented fully, I.e. with exactitude and fullness of any and all quotations relevant to the Trial

Article VIII
The Judges have the right to subpoena and question any person

Article IX
Both parties have a right to be heard by the Court to their full extent, not in a repetitive manner, and all witnesses shall have the right to give full and proper testimony, again, not in a repetitive manner, with information relevant to the hearing

Article X
Decisions made by the Court shall be by the majority opinion of the Judges, and shall be in favor of the more righteous party, I.e. the party in keeping with International Law and with the contract/ treaty. Decisions shall be made after the hearing

Article XI
Punishments shall be
Dealt out within 1 year of the Decision
Based upon both the Degree of Violation and the law it violates
Determined by the Judges’ opinion, along with Degrees of Violation
Standardized for all member nations

Article XII
Procedure laws may be added by the Judges’ decision to afore stated Articles but may not violate or overrule them

Article XIII
Anything that violates, appeals, or refers to in any way, the laws of the UN with the exception of genocide, any international treaty between UN members, or any international diplomatic contract between UN members, is in the jurisdiction of the Court

OOC:
Just a note to you. Many have tried this and it's always failed. It's just something that isn't really fesable in this game.

Heck, people have even tried to RP the creation of one and all the older nations have said 'heck no' to it.






BTW. I voted No.

It's unfeasible and illegal as written. The specified method of peopling the court would require changes in game code unless the court is completely role-played, having no actual effect on the nations. And at that point it runs into problems in that you can't require nations to participate in anything that isn't hard-coded into the game.

And then there's the whole problem with convincing a majority that they should submit themselves to adjudication in front of an extra-sovereign body.

Well, I'm not sure what you mean by "peopling the court." The General Assembly doesn't really elect people. The Court is entierly RPd. I think because it's a committee, its okay. I checked with the rules. But if you meant something different, or I interperated the rules wrong, I would appreciate you correcting me. Thank you for your input, and I look forward to your further comments on this proposal!

As has been pointed out by the delegations from Rubina and Shazbotdom, your proposal has many problems as currently written. It would likely require a complete re-write just to remove all of the illegalities.

Before going into a detailed analysis of the current text I have some questions. What is the purpose of this court? What would it have jurisdiction over? What sort of cases would it hear? None of those things are clear from the text.

Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky
Chairman, Yeldan Committee For State Security

Article I is devoted to purposes, Article XIII is the jurisdiction, and it hears cases under its jurisdiction. I think that answers your questions, but if you think it still needs clarification I'm definately open to suggestions (please be specific, it's hard to rewrite everything based off comments like "it needs a better purpose")

Well, I'm not sure what you mean by "peopling the court."
I believe what Rubina was referring to is your method of staffing the court. This court is basically a committee. Committees spring to life fully staffed by Gnomes. The GA can't nominate, elect or impeach them.

Article 4 would be legal if all it did was establish a commission instead of specifying the members of said commission.

However your last article conflicts with The Eon Convention on Genocide (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=7680087&postcount=84). Since the rest of your resolution hinges on the last article, it's pretty much useless.

The following lines are definitely illegal:

Article IV
Elected by the majority of the General Assembly
No such mechanism exists. Game mechanics violation.

Article XI
Punishments shall be
Determined by the author of the law broken, along with the Degrees of Violation
Standardized for all member nations
"The author of the law being broken" may be a dead, missing, or irrelevant nation. Metagaming violation.
"Standardized for all member nations" seems to allow the court to override multiple guidelines passed in prior resolutions, effectively repealing or amending them. Can't do that.

Article XIII
Anything that violates, appeals, or refers to in any way, the laws of the UN, any international treaty, or any international diplomatic contract, is in the jurisdiction of the Court
There are plenty of treaties between non-UN nations, or between UN and non-UN nations. This claims jurisdiction. Can't do it. UN proposals have jurisdiction only over current UN nations.


... and frankly, without the ability to affect non-UN nations, any such court is going to be a paper tiger. That's why these always fail.

Alright, so from the way I see it, this thing needs a lot of work. I've started making revisions to comply with the rules (thanks so much for pointing the violations out) :)
Article IV:
Eliminate the part where Judges are elected by the General Assembly

Article XI:
Replace "determined by the author of the law, along with degrees of violation," with "Determined by the Judges' opinion, along with Degrees of Violation"

Article XIII:
I edited this so much I just thought I'd post the completely redone version:
"Anything that violates, appeals, or refers to in any way, the laws of the UN with the exception of genocide, any international treaty between UN members, or any international diplomatic contract between UN members, is in the jurisdiction of the Court"

Again, I appreciate the help and support, and I hope for the continued help and support this resolution needs. Thanks!

OOC: Not a problem, but edit the original post to include your changes or you'll just get new people complaining about the old problems. It also makes it easier to check it for more problems.

Good idea. Thanks. (I seem to say that a lot lately)

OOC: there is a very basic problem that it's not clear what game-effects (as in changes to nations' stats) this proposal should have. If the answer is "None," then it's a no go. It has the feel of something that is better roleplayed than legislated, and I daresay you'll only get interested noises from those nations who never expect to have to come before it. There are plenty of current real-world examples of bodies like this failing to get off the ground because one or more of the big players forsees them being a problem.

I thought about it, and it seems Human Rights is the best category, because the resolution is an effort to enforce the laws of the UN in member nations to ensure that the rights of their people are not violated.
Should I include this in the preamble or something?

OOC: Enforcing laws is usually counted as 'Moral Decency'.

Nothing prevents a nation from leaving the UN if he is charged with a UN crime and refuses to go to the international court, and since war is a last resort, negotiating a nation to come back to the UN to be duly charged on a previous crime is just ludicrous.

This proposal only provides an illusion of a court. If a Judge subpoenas a citizen in nation x, that person can disapear and not be heard from. The international court would do what? Go in a sovereign nation to hunt him down? That sounds like an international police force or an international army to force compliance.

Proposal rejected.

How about we say, then, that if a country, party, person, etc violates a law of the UN while bound by International Law we can charge him, her, them (a person or group would be considered bound if they were acting illegally in, toward, or out of a member nation)...
And for the subpoening issue, if person x was in a member nation, we could have them enforce it, if person x was in a nonmember nation, we couldn't really make them enforce it, but we could request that they do it (but, I mean, I'm sure there is a sufficient number of people in member nations...). And to prevent person x's flight, we could have person x notified of the subpoena by officers of the nation, so they could enforce the subpoena as soon as it is given to person x. Does that sound good?

Usually a high profile crime that would fall under the jurisdiction of international courts would be perpetrated by a highly political individual who may have allies in many places that make even the delivery of a subpoena difficult. "We lost the paperwork", "the agents we sent got lost and couldn't find who we were supposed to find", "we misunderstood the urgency of the subpoena" etc.

It would be like a US court sending a lawyer over to a local drug dealer and asking him to pass on a subpoena to a major drug lord so that he could be charged for distributing illegal drugs.

Does your proposal sound good? Of course, yes it sounds good on paper, it sounds good in theory. The practicality and feasibility is bad, it just assumes that a convicted individual will just succumb and present himself to the nearest detention center once he has been informed of his crime. The only way to prevent this is to have an international security force and that is not allowed in the OOC game rules.

Actually, for the subpoena I was thinking more along the lines of expert witnesses, not so much for the accused people because we can't exactly force them to say anthing incriminating (I think it's under Universal Bill of Rights but I'm not sure), and if the accused don't show even when they've been notified of their trial they wave their right to representation and a defense so the trial just goes on and then the judges make their decision and the International Police or Army or something can carry it out...
Does that sound good? Should I add that?

Oh, and also, you say there would be no way to enforce anything, but for that matter there is no way to enforce any other resolution that has ever been passes so you might as well say that we should just stop passing proposals in the UN.

Actually, for the subpoena I was thinking more along the lines of expert witnesses, not so much for the accused people because we can't exactly force them to say anthing incriminating (I think it's under Universal Bill of Rights but I'm not sure), and if the accused don't show even when they've been notified of their trial they wave their right to representation and a defense so the trial just goes on and then the judges make their decision and the International Police or Army or something can carry it out...
Does that sound good? Should I add that?

Oh, and also, you say there would be no way to enforce anything, but for that matter there is no way to enforce any other resolution that has ever been passes so you might as well say that we should just stop passing proposals in the UN.

OOC-->
understood for the subpoena part, you dont mind having trials "in absentia", that's cool too. Problem one, there is no international army or police. Problem two, enforcement of resolutions is done in a meta-gaming way which changes stats of a nation and your proposal requires a police force or an international army to force compliance. You can ban the use of a specific weapon, you can not force a nation to reduce military budget. The proposal you mentioned can be implemented but the loopholes are very large and the only way to plug them is to add illegal clauses.

voting in this proposal would be window dressing and not really do anything concrete. The intention would be admirable but not practical.

I don't think that's illegal. I mean, I would, except we have resolutions that are relatively similar in function (exempla gratia: the Eon Convention on Genocide), so I think its okay. So, if you haven't already, check it out, and if my proposal does something drastically different than it, please notify me.
BTW I really appreciate all the help you're giving me

The Eon convention is an abject failure, though.

I don't think that's illegal. I mean, I would, except we have resolutions that are relatively similar in function (exempla gratia: the Eon Convention on Genocide), so I think its okay. So, if you haven't already, check it out, and if my proposal does something drastically different than it, please notify me.
BTW I really appreciate all the help you're giving me

OOC--> I meant illegal in the NationStates game itself. Certain rules do not allow certain laws to be made, like having an international army or police force.

So my proposal kind of seems like it'll never work. That's a dissapointment. Oh well, maybe next time...
But on the off chance there is a way to make it legal, though my hope is mitigated, it would be great to know.

The Eon convention is an abject failure, though.

OOC: At least it was when it was RPd, now that the gnomes are running it it works great.