Because I had no idea - until you told me - that these sections of the Wisconsin Code had anything to do with "harassment, perjury, bribery or counterfeiting" - and no way of knowing apart from making a guess and doing a Google search. This is hilarious, because the Regent is complaining about "people not knowing what's against the law", where the status quo is you have to look up the laws of a completely different country right now to know what's against the law in Talossa, and you don't mind that, because you're used to finding out such information. I'm not. No-one else is (except perhaps other lawyers).

At least there is something to look up, which is explicitly identified in the law. It can be improved (and I’ve made specific suggestions how to do do), but it’s still better than not even have anything to look up for those who are motivated to do so.

I'm amazed that you think giving the State the administrative ability to take away citizenship is less oppressive than giving the CpI the discretion to decide - upon a formal complaint - whether someone has violated the Covenants and to evoke a discretionary punishment which may be far less than banishment.

It seems that you’re focused on situations where a citizen who has already been through a full-fledged criminal prosecution and is literally sitting in an actual brick-and-mortar prison for a term of many years, and is facing potential loss of Talossan citizenship on top of that, and the question is whether they should go through a simple administrative process or a criminal trial (where guilt is essentially presumed anyways) before losing Talossan citizenship. I’m focused on situations where a citizen thinks he or she is abiding by the law to the best of his or her ability and the question is whether they should be put through a trial and risk losing their citizenship at all. For your citizen, the additional process and consequence they’re facing from Talossa is a drop in the ocean compared to the process and consequences that they have already faced and that we can’t do anything about. For my citizen, the threat of prosecution and loss of citizenship in Talossa is everything.

So no, I don’t think an administrative process that results in loss of Talossan citizenship is much of an incremental burden for the citizen who is already sitting in prison for 25 years after a trial with due process (and if they didn’t get due process, loss of Talossan citizenship is the least of their problems, and we can add safeguards to the process mitigate that risk) and conviction of a crime that was defined in advance by law (because they hopefully live in a jurisdiction that—unlike Talossa if this bill passes—believes in the principle of legality). On the other hand, I think putting a citizen in jeopardy of loss of Talossan citizenship for a “crime” that is not defined by any law and of which the citizen had no prior notice is kind of a big deal. And yes, the actual punishment may well be less than banishment, but that’s still on top of the prosecution itself, and starting from a baseline of zero (whereas with your citizen we’re talking about starting from a baseline of a macronational prosecution and several years of incarceration). 

So when it comes to A.3 we’re talking about cases where the choice is between a lengthy prison term and loss of Talossan citizenship or just a lengthy prison term, whereas when it comes to the repeal of the criminal code we’re talking about cases where the choice is between prosecution and no prosecution. That can mean prosecution where there ought to be no prosecution (because prosecutors are encouraged to prosecute offenses that would not have been enacted by the legislature) or no prosecution where there ought to be prosecution (if the Cort declines the invitation to create a criminal common law under the 7th Covenant). So you’ll really be rolling the dice between anarchy and arbitrary prosecution. And it’s unnecessary if you’re really concerned primarily about non-Talossan crimes. You could enact something like A.3 without repealing the existing criminal code for Talossan crimes, so I think this bill is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Conversely, if your fear is rogue prosecutions, not rogue convictions, might I suggest that limits on prosecutorial power would be the answer? I suggested elsewhere a "grand jury", but no-one bit on that one.

Yes, I think the principle of legality is a great limit on prosecutorial power: have crimes and their elements defined up front, so if prosecutors try to charge someone with something that isn’t even a crime there can be a procedure to have the charges quickly dismissed as legally insufficient. And that also makes it easier to identify cases of malicious prosecution and sanction prosecutors who bring frivolous charges. A grand jury is a fine idea in principle, but it would be a lot more practical if we had a much larger active population. Any solution that requires multiple additional bodies means taking away from anything else we would like to see get done in Talossa (legal reform projects, language stuff, other cultural endeavours, etc.).

Let's go back to why we are doing this. It is not just because it is unseemly to have written another jurisdiction's laws wholesale into our own. It is because one of our own citizens is doing time for statutory rape, and that section of the law did not give Talossa's State or courts any options to disassociate ourselves from this charater and his crimes. I don't see how your suggested amendments (reasonable on the surface) would do so; mine would.

Why we’re doing what, specifically? How does a general repeal of the criminal code achieve the purpose you’re talking about? Why not leave the criminal code in place for Talossan crimes and separately enact a mechanism (whether a new crime or something else) to deal with the issue of non-Talossan crimes that you’re talking about? I don’t see how one is necessary, or even helpful, for accomplishing the other.

I think we’ve been talking past each other to an extent. I think the primary purpose of Talossan criminal law should be to address Talossan crimes: crimes committed in Talossa, or against Talossans, or against the Talossan state. If a Talossan citizen is also a Texan and assaults someone in Texas, Texas will deal with it (and is best suited to). If a Talossan counterfeits Talossan coins or stamps, or commits perjury in a Talossan forum, or tries to bribe a Talossan official, or engages in online harassment of another citizen (which we had a prosecution for back in ‘06), only Talossa is likely to care (or at least to care nearly as much as we do). Why repeal our existing laws criminalizing forgery, perjury, bribery, and online harassment in order to deal with that Texan crime that can be handled with a separate law? My suggestions are aimed at making better Talossan law for Talossan crimes. How to respond to non-Talossan crimes committed by Talossans should be a separate issue.

As far as I can tell, you don't like eliminating the current criminal code stuff and replacing it with vague and contradictory principles left to the whim of the legal system, and I have the same concerns.  I guess our objections are different in the sense that you focused on the elimination and I focused on the replacement, but I have to admit I don't understand this particular semantic focus.

I’m just trying to explain what I meant when I said we need “something along the lines of” the proposed A.3. Our criminal code only addresses crimes over which Talossa has jurisdiction. This bill does what I see as two very different things: it scraps the laws that define Talossan crimes, and also makes provision for dealing with citizens who have committed non-Talossan crimes. I agree that the second objective is a legitimate issue that we should address in some way, though I do take exception to the specifics of the proposal.

Am I right or wrong in my recollection that it was your idea to write the Wisconsin Code into our own laws in the first place?

Not quite right. The law that adopted the “civil and criminal code of the State of Wisconsin” (or “criminal and civil,” I can’t recall the precise formulation off the top of my head) as Talossan law predated me. The immediate problem I saw, and tried to address with my bill, is that it was unclear which portions of the Wisconsin statutes these words were intended to comprehend. So my bill identified specific titles of the Wisconsin statutes that would apply to Talossa, with the intent of making things clearer and more definite than they were before.

And am I right or wrong that the Wisconsin Code has never been used to punish a crime in Talossa, but on the other hand that you personally have relied on Wisconsin legal briefs in your representations before the Corts?

You’re wrong on the first point, as Sir Alexandreu pointed out. I certainly have cited to Wisconsin case law, as I would encourage anyone to do. I’ve never used any resources that aren’t available to anyone—particularly Google Scholar and Google Books.

We could do a lot to point people to relevant resources and provide research tips. At least the status quo provides guideposts to relevant sources of authority. I think you’re mistaken in believing the situation would be improved by trading the status quo for a free-for-all where all the rules are made up as we go. When there are no clear standards set forth in the law, a clever lawyer can argue that any standard ought to apply.

I think there are some arguments for retaining Wisconsin-based criminal laws, but those are probably better discussed in the other thread (which I regret not having seen before now). But like I said before, I don’t feel too strongly about that. What’s critical, in my opinion, is that criminal offenses and their penalties be clearly set forth in the law. This 1) makes it possible for citizens to know what conduct is prohibited and 2) circumscribes the discretion of government prosecutors. Consider Sir Thomas More’s advice to William Roper.

 

I like this, but are there typos in the first (“deprived of life, liberty, or property”) and next to last (“subjected to cruel and unusual punishment”) sentences of the proposed language?

I vote per on RZ18, non on the VoC.

Welcome back! May the next issue not be so long in coming!