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Bill: Ratification of the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime
Details
Submitted by[?]: Socialist Party of Kalistan (SPoK)
Status[?]: passed
Votes: This bill proposes for the ratification of a treaty. It will require two-thirds of the legislature to vote in favor[?]. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: March 2731
Description[?]:
| This bill asks for the ratification of the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime. If this treaty is ratified, it becomes binding and will define national law. |
Proposals
Article 1
Ratify the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 15:43:21, March 24, 2009 CET | From | Socialist Party of Kalistan (SPoK) | To | Debating the Ratification of the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime |
| Message | Here is a treaty which codifies house rules as "Kalistan Laws". If this passes, it becomes essentially the same as a direct amendment to the Constitution, one which even the UPM will recognize, as that Party itself wrote: "As far as the age of majority is concerned, only a bill passed through congress changing the age, or a treaty, is constitutional." When this treaty passes, keeping the age static will be constitutional, and any attempt to alter it will be a violation of the Treaty and therefore the constitution. This should resolve the matter, assuming this treaty is ratified. |
| Date | 21:35:28, March 24, 2009 CET | From | Libertarian Democrats | To | Debating the Ratification of the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime |
| Message | This isn't an amendment, it is a complete rewrite of the constitution! |
| Date | 22:56:14, March 24, 2009 CET | From | Libertarian Democrats | To | Debating the Ratification of the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime |
| Message | "Subject to the provisions of Article 3, the People's Assembly shall have the power to amend this Constitution. Amendments shall require a vote of two-thirds of the members of the People's Assembly in order to pass and may only apply to certain areas of this constitution." Read this part carefully, "may only apply to certain areas of this constitution." A complete rewrite is not constitutional, therefore no party is required to follow this treaty. |
| Date | 00:23:35, March 25, 2009 CET | From | Revolutionary Freedom Party -- KEG SLAM | To | Debating the Ratification of the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime |
| Message | Gee, sounds like a constitutional court case to me. . . |
| Date | 01:37:21, March 25, 2009 CET | From | Libertarian Democrats | To | Debating the Ratification of the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime |
| Message | The constitutional court sounds like constitutional court case to me. What is objective about a body of partisan justices? It seems the KCC only enhances a tyranny of the majority and decreases the general ability for reform via opposition parties. |
| Date | 01:42:56, March 25, 2009 CET | From | Revolutionary Freedom Party -- KEG SLAM | To | Debating the Ratification of the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime |
| Message | You lost. Again. Just deal with it. All the other parties have agreed to play hte game a certain way, and to abide by certain rules. |
| Date | 02:02:11, March 25, 2009 CET | From | Libertarian Democrats | To | Debating the Ratification of the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime |
| Message | I agree to play by the rules set forth by the constitution. There is no winning or losing, as conservative parties rise, conservative legislation is passed and the same when the left rises. The great pendulum! The infinite back and forth. (Hamilton vs Jefferson) |
| Date | 03:30:15, March 25, 2009 CET | From | Socialist Party of Kalistan (SPoK) | To | Debating the Ratification of the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime |
| Message | We have amended the constitution with this this treaty. We have done so with 2/3rds vote. And we have not changed a single thing in the constitution. We merely added sections on to it, that nowhere supercede any portion of the Constitution. We have rewritten nothing. I put it to a democratic vote. Not only did it get way more than 2/3rds required for any constitutional amendment, but it also got zero votes (so far) against it. If you cannot abide by democracy, you are invited to take it up in constitutional court. And if you continue to willfully and completely violate the terms of a treaty, which you yourself argued is constitutional (as in treaties are constitutional, this is a treaty, and therefore is constitutional), we will sponsor legislation ourselves to censure you. |
| Date | 03:31:44, March 25, 2009 CET | From | Socialist Party of Kalistan (SPoK) | To | Debating the Ratification of the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime |
| Message | This is a democracy. You can criticize the government and its policies all you like but you will abide by the will of the majority, or you will be censured. If you play in a democracy, you have to accept being in the non-winning side until you can cobble together a coalition big enough to get yourself into the winning side. That's the rules of the system. Complain all you like but you will follow the law. |
| Date | 03:53:45, March 25, 2009 CET | From | Libertarian Democrats | To | Debating the Ratification of the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime |
| Message | OOC: "Compliance: The treaty contains no articles that can be verified." Why didn't you add the age of majority to the compliance section? IC: I'll bide my time, though most parties ignore my legislation anyway. Also, I wish you had broken this down into several small treaties, with debate ensuing before vote. I can't believe only UPM has a problem with the age of majority, party militias, and thinks the KCC needs reform. |
| Date | 04:08:52, March 25, 2009 CET | From | Libertarian Democrats | To | Debating the Ratification of the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime |
| Message | Four, five and six should be up to the executive branch. Seven, I agree with, but it is unenforecable. Ten, censure is a parliamentary procedure, not a law. Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen seem unconstitutional. Fourteen, enforcing cultural ideals on a free people seems antithetical to diversity. |
| Date | 13:39:58, March 25, 2009 CET | From | Socialist Party of Kalistan (SPoK) | To | Debating the Ratification of the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime |
| Message | We appreciate the comments of the UPM. These seem far more constructive, and are points we can debate politically. The point of these is to provide an extension to the constitution, to cover aspects that the constitution forgot to cover. Perhaps it is a matter of jurisprudential philosophy. Our Party obviously believes that legal positivism doesn't go nearly far enough: the government should also be made to do what is right. Therefore, we believe that there are things that the government should be doing which is not found in any written document. The problem is we run up against positivists who seem to believe that if it isn't in the constitution the government has no business doing it. So to overcome these objections, we play that silly little game and write it down. These things that are written down, and passed with a supermajority, according to constitutional procedure, become constitutional, until they are challenged in court. Since there is not court mechanism in the constitution, we have created one. The partisanism of the court is a problem, sure, but there is not independent judge that does not side with a faction, and this court is merely overtly partisan: that is, we admit it, where other courts don't admit it. There is a court now where the constitutionality of the document can be tried. But if we refuse to use that, it falls back to the people, whose will is expressed via the legislature of this country. The will of the people has therefore been expressed by the 574 seats which have voted so far for this constitution. The people's vote has made it constitutional. It is constitutional because the supermajority, operating under the rules of the system which we all agreed to when we joined, have voted for the document. This document is therefore constitutional, in total, as it currently stands, and it now awaits someone to raise this issue in court. On point one: We didn't break these down into several smaller treaties because we believed we had enough votes to pass this whole thing as an omnibus, and therefore our split of the treaty could have been considered dilatory. Here's how each of these are challenged. There is a method of altering this regime, and that is to pass a resolution to overturn one of these laws. If you have convinced enough people, through reasoned debate to vote against that law, We can commit that we will sponsor the legislation to abrogate that previous treaty and supersede it with a new one without that proposal in it. That is in the treaty itself. But as we believed that we had enough votes to pass it as an omnibus, there was really no point in breaking it up. On point two: I believe you are not the only one that opposes the age of majority, nor are you the only one that thinks the KCC needs reform. So see the above statement to make those changes. Again, convincing people by reasoned debate. I am waiting to hear your plan. I don't agree that voting age should be changed, but I can be convinced otherwise if you don't resort to a moralistic "What about the Children? Please Think about the children! For the Love of GOD: THE CHILDREN!" sort of argument. And I'd like to hear your ideas about how the KCC could be different. As it stands now, it is pretty good, but of course every single institution could be reformed and made better. So write up a plan and let's debate it. On point three: It is impossible to leave this up to the executive when the executive always changes every three years. Besides, this cabinet works with the PM. These are laws that the legislature has set on its own cabinet. These are functions that were neglected in the constitution when it was written, and serve to give the cabinet a better idea of what it should be doing. On point four: Seven may be unenforceable, but all these laws are unenforceable, because they are game concepts that the designers neglected to include in the game. The majority in Kalistan at the time of their passage believed that these should have been included. So we agreed to enforce them ourselves. This particular provision was the result of a constitutional court hearing, as I understand it, and we tacitly agreed to abide by the rulings of the KCC when we signed up to play in Kalistan. And now that tacit agreement has been codified with the strength of a treaty. On point five: Censure was included because it, like the powers of the ministries, gives the legislature a power it did not have under the woefully bare constitution. Our legislature now has a way of compelling disruptive parties to stop disrupting things, whereas before we simply had to pretend like it did not happen or get ourselves involved in an argument over email. In other words, we have become our own moderators, and we have introduced democracy into moderation. You are right: it is a parliamentary procedure, but it is not one we had before it became a law that permitted the legislature to do it. And now, it is a law that people can cite against troublemakers to get them to stop making trouble. It is an expansion of the power of the collective over the independence of the individual, which is a hallmark of majoritarian democracy. On point six: 11, 12, and 13 are not unconstitutional. They have been made constitutional by institutional approval. However, there is a problem with 10. When I wrote the document up, this was expanded to ten treaties , because we overturned the law that limited treaty proposal to five. However, this contradicts the five limit found in article 6. That law has been overturned, and so the ten is the limit in effect. But regardless, these provisions were written into the constitution by way of treaty, and passed by following institutional rules, and do not directly contradict anything in the existing constitution, so they are all definitively constitutional. On point seven: We are not enforcing cultural ideals on free people, we are arguing that culture matters in Kalistan, and providing an institutional mechanism to sanction those who ignore that culture, since they can't be punished for the violation of norms in the polls. When a party joins the legislature of Kalistan they are make an institutional agreement that they will abide by election results, follow all laws and rules of the institution itself, and work within the institution. Observance of Kalistani culture is now an institutional rule. It does not prevent someone from being a-cultural, or developing their own culture, if something like this is possible, but as it is a treaty now that has the power to constrain intra-institutional behavior, it becomes an institutional rules. In a sense, each and every member of the legislature is free, but only within some constraints. There is never perfect freedom, but there should also not be arbitrary constraint. This bill takes constraints from arbitrary and makes them issues of democratic agreement. It also provides the legislature a mechanism to sanction those who violate institutional agreements, through the institutional mechanism of censure. Observance of Kalistani culture is merely now codified as another institutional agreement, along with the above listed agreements. |
| Date | 07:52:20, March 26, 2009 CET | From | Libertarian Democrats | To | Debating the Ratification of the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime |
| Message | There is nothing silly about being a constitutionalist. Also, if constitutionality is denoted by popularity, isn't that an arbitrary standard? If, say, the UPM/NRP, and perhaps the LPL, take power and witdhraw from this treaty, does that make it unconstitutional? OOC: When you state, "this court is merely overtly partisan: that is, we admit it, where other courts don't admit it," are you IC or OOC? I mean, Kalistan is the only nation in Terra that I know of which has a CC. Therefore, there are no other courts by which this court can be judged by and we must use common sense to regulate the KCC. |
| Date | 13:26:45, March 26, 2009 CET | From | Socialist Party of Kalistan (SPoK) | To | Debating the Ratification of the The Internation Kalistani Laws Regime |
| Message | IC: We too are constitutionalists. But we are not originalists. We are constitutionalists of the functional institutionalist variety. We do not suggest that 1) the constitution is eternal and should not be altered, or 2) we know or agree with what the original document actually meant. We believe that 1) the document is a living and changing document, meant to govern the government, and 2) should serve a purpose, that is, the document serves a function and removed from that function, it is a worthless piece of paper. We don't suppose that the original authors (or even we who came later) were the eternal lawgiver and therefore know for all time the best form of government. Instead, we all strive to make the government better through the constitution. Sometimes we will get it wrong, and it is up to others to correct our errors. Nor do we suppose that the document itself is sacred, in and of itself. It serves a purpose and should not be revered as is, because when it stops working, either because it itself is flawed or because society has changed in the meanwhile and the document has not changed, it loses its purpose. A document that does not serve the society is fit only to be used as toilet paper. The constitution is meant to constrain the government from exercise of absolute power, but can be amended when the supermajority of the government feel it necessary. And then if we in the supermajority get that wrong (which you will likely admit, is entirely possible) it is up to another supermajority to form around the issue that we got it wrong, and change it. The document serves a purpose, and that is what it is for: I mean, this document is meant to constrain power, and be more powerful; than those who would violate it, but it should also be increased or decreased when it no longer addresses the society it is supposed to govern. It is specifically an artifact, a product of man, and NOT of God, and as such, is meant only to be a tool. When that tool no longer serves the purposes of society, it needs to be altered or discarded. Therefore, I too am a constitutionalist. OOC: I mean IC. OOC we know what the ideologies of each and every USC member is, though they openly try to deceive people and maintain that they are above politics. Anyone who does not believe the USC is partisan, look at Bush v. Gore, and most decisions made by the Roberts court. IC, we admit that the court is partisan, and therefore ideological. Although, it seems that the court is not political in that they don't make decisions looking for votes. The justices only do what their Parties tell them to. Therefore, the court generally represents the interests of the society, and does not seek an objective standard of law. But this is fine with SPoK, which argues that the government should always do what is ethically right, regardless of if there is a law about that or not, and though we may be mistaken (and this is fine too, because there should never be such a thing as a permanent law which cannot be changed by someone else) we all individually determine what is ethically correct, and collectively this is a determination of how we as a society are ethically correct or not. |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | ||||
| yes |
Total Seats: 574 | ||||
| no | Total Seats: 113 | ||||
| abstain | Total Seats: 63 |
| Random fact: The influence a bill has on elections decreases over time, until it eventually is no longer relevant. This can explain shifts in your party's position to the electorate and your visibility. |
| Random quote: "You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves." - Abraham Lincoln |