QuoteIt's not.  The Eighth Covenant provides that "consensual sexual activity" cannot be taxed or burdened or outlawed.

My mistake then.

In my defence, this confusion could be easily avoided if we just had a list of acts that should be deemed illegal, bypassing the need to go through the Wisconsin criminal code and also the Organic Law and the Lexhatx to make sure nothing contradicts each other. I believe that if we want a native criminal code that is unambiguous and accessible to amateurs, we'll just have to compile our own, even if its tedious and annoying as hell.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on June 07, 2021, 07:17:15 PM
Tell me which part of the Covenant of Rights and Freedoms "prostitution" (i.e. sex work) is repugnant to, first.

Firstly, let me preface that the word "prostitution" is the neutral legal term for sex work in German, and I wasnt aware of any negative connotations in English. Sorry for that faux pas.

Secondly, prostitution is criminalised by Wis. Stat. § 944.30, which means it's currently illegal in Talossa as well if it occurs between two citizens, which is why I used it as an example. I wouldn't mind legalising it of course, but others might, and I'd rather have a debate in the Ziu about which crimes to keep and which to drop rather than leaving it vague.

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EDIT: My idea of legal reform would look something like this:
- We draw up a list of things that should be illegal and how to punish them, and whether they are misdemeanours or felonies, with the distinction being that felonies can result in banishment or revocation of citizenship.
- If a Talossan is convicted by a credible outside court of an act that is in the aforementioned list, they get punished accordingly by a Talossan court. We would also draw up a list of countries whose legal systems are considered credible for ease of use.

The problem with this is that different crimes are defined differently in different credible countries, so to make sure that the act in question is actually a crime in Talossa, we'd have to check the other country's criminal code etc etc, which would only make matters more complicated. So my idea sucks, but its the best one I have currently.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on June 07, 2021, 07:01:04 PM
Now you're getting into the weeds of "how can we really know anything, ever". If you're saying that there is no way that Talossa can determine that the court which convicted I. Canún of raping children was credible, then I give up, there is no point to any of this.

No, I'm obviously not saying that.

What I am saying is that we would need some kind of way of consistently determining which outside court rulings correspond to which Talossan court rulings, because even among countries with credible criminal justice systems, laws and punishments vary wildly. Converting an American child rape conviction into Talossan would be very trivial, but child rape isn't the only thing that we'd want to punish in future, right?

It would be unreasonable to punish two different Talossans differently for the same crime based solely on where they happen to live and thus were convicted. For example, prostitution is illegal in Wisconsin punishable by a fine of up to 6666¤40 and/or 9 months in prison, but perfectly legal in Germany. What would we do about things like this?

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on June 07, 2021, 05:27:04 PM
Which is why our only choice when deciding Talossan sanctions is to rely on the verdicts of credible (I put that word in the law advisedly, i.e. not the kangaroo courts of authoritarian regimes) outside courts.

Different countries' legal systems are pretty diverse, so wouldn't relying on credible outside verdicts require at least some kind of conversion key or something? EDIT: And how would you determine which countries have credible outside courts and which don't? It's easy for a lot of countries, but there are a ton of unclear or edge cases as well.

Quote... aw man, the more I look through El Lexhatx Section A the more I find out that it's based on the very very American distinction of "felony" and "misdemeanour" for grading various crimes. So the companion statute to indigenously define various crimes will have to either take that on board, or replace it, whichever is less annoying.

German law states that, in general, a felony is any crime punishable by at least one year in prison, and conversely a misdemeanour is any crime punishable by less than one year in prison or by fine (§12 StGB). Maybe we could use something similar to decide which outside verdicts would constitute felony or misdemeanour charges in Talossa, in case the country in question doesnt make the distinction.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on June 07, 2021, 04:46:12 PM
I have to also add that Marcel could find out what the penalties for perjury are in Wisconsin. Since I'm too busy right now, could Marcel also Google what the legal definition of perjury is under Wisconsin law?

The statute in question begins with the words "Whoever under oath or affirmation orally makes a false material statement which the person does not believe to be true, in any matter, cause, action or proceeding, before any of the following, whether legally constituted or exercising powers as if legally constitutedis guilty of a Class H felony", which sounds like what youre asking for.

QuoteAnd all the legal issues (including judicial precedent) involved in finding someone guilty of perjury, that Talossan courts would currently have to know?

I'm afraid I'd have to sift through 173 years worth of court cases to find everything that might be relevant (a problem with Common Law in general) so probably not.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on June 07, 2021, 04:46:12 PM
As opposed to the current system, where we can't do jack about it as a Kingdom when we find out a prominent citizen raped little children.

About that. I'm not sure if I read this right, but it seems to me like Talossan courts cannot prosecute or punish a citizen who commits a crime against a non-citizen (Lexh A.3), which seems like an extreme oversight, because otherwise that crime would be covered by Wis. Stat. § 948.02, punishable by banishment, revocation of citizenship and civil disability for up to 180 years.

I didnt know what the current law on perjury was, so I googled "wisconsin law perjury" and found Wis. Stat. § 946.31, which would mean it's a Class H felony. I didnt know what that was, so I googled some more and found Wis. Stat. § 939.50, which would mean the punishment for perjury before a Talossan court would be a fine of up to 6666¤40 and/or up to 6 years in prison. Except imprisonment isnt a de facto authorised punishment (Lexh A.5.3), so possible punishments would be banishment (Lexh A.5.1), revocation of citizenship (Lexh A.5.2), civil disability for up to 18 years (Lexh A.5.4, Lexh A.6.1) and/or the aforementioned fine (Lexh A.5.5), and I guess restitution (Lexh A.5.6) and reprimand (Lexh A.5.7) but those seem kinda silly in this context.

For me, the problem isnt finding out what is and isnt legal, the Wisconsin Statutes are all freely available on the internet, and the Lexhatx will tell you which of these statutes apply to Talossa and which punishments are permitted, but something about this still rubs me the wrong way... I can't really pinpoint it though. I guess part of it would be that the punishment is up to SIX YEARS IN PRISON, what the hell??

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on June 06, 2021, 04:31:09 PM
I didn't realize so much had changed in the language over the last 6 years!

The spelling changed. For any other language that wouldnt be too noteworthy, but the spelling debates among Ladintschen were vicious, and I believe it would do learners a disservice to teach them the old spellings and potentially reheat the aforementioned vicious debates.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on June 06, 2021, 03:42:18 PM
There's always the Memrise courses as a start:
https://app.memrise.com/course/498768/first-steps-in-talossan-1a-words-for-erteiers/
https://app.memrise.com/course/627902/first-steps-in-talossan-1b-basic-words-phrases/

Although they might need to be updated, not sure.

Those are pretty much out of date, which is why I didn't link them, and we don't have direct access to them, which is why we cant update them directly. We're currently working on a new Memrise course.

A few things:
- All these titles are masculine by default. Check the Recomendăs for details.
- Almost all nouns in Talossan need an article or another "introduction word". That includes plurals. Check the Recomendăs for details. In this case, itd be either Els Membreux dal Cosă ("The members...") or Dels Membreux dal Cosă (just "Members...")
- it's written Mençei, not Mençéi. The latter is a misspelling, and its been annoying me for a while now.

Yeah... we need learning materials.

I tried to write some lessons but I kinda gave up because I didnt know how to teach pronunciations, which are both elementary and overly complex. Spiking the learning curve this early seems unreasonable to me. In the end I have no experience with language teaching, but if anyone here does and likes to help me with this, please feel free to contact me.

If you can read the IPA and dont mind overly technical descriptions  and linguistics jargon, you could try the Recomendăs (on TalossaWiki) to learn the grammar and look up words on l'Översteir (oversteir.talossa.com) when you need them. Keep in mind though that the Recomendăs are 1) not finished and 2) not beginner-friendly, some caution is advised.

EDIT: About joining SIGN, all you need to do is announce your intention to join, and if more than half of existing members accept you (or if you were a member of the CÚG before it collapsed), you're in. Though you'll only really need to join if you want a say in grammar changes or whether to add new words into the official dictionary.

Quote from: Iac Marscheir on June 04, 2021, 09:08:08 AM
Set up a wiki page and edit it?

Yeah either that or a Google Doc.

Question: Does a candidate need to be an MZ to become Seneschal? If not, the Tafialist Party nominates Iac Marscheir. That's what he gets for voting for me...

Otherwise I'll nominate myself instead.

I'll be assigning all 5 seats to myself.

Whoa, this is gonna take forever... I'll see what I can do though.