[quote="Diderot Mirabeau":1e03rsev]Could you please explain to me the logical consistency between your argument that you put trial by jury into your proposal because it was already in the constitution and the fact that your proposal ends up changing more in the constitution than any bill before it? It seems there must be other criteria beyond what is already in the constitution that determines what goes in your bill.[/quote:1e03rsev]
[i:1e03rsev]Read[/i:1e03rsev] what I wrote. The point was that, because the framers of the original constitution had put it in the constitution as a [i:1e03rsev]requirement[/i:1e03rsev], it was not unreasonable of me to assume that they did so having considered the practical aspects of the matter. The point was not that the fact that it was in the constitution already was a sufficient reason by itself to retain it.
[quote:1e03rsev]It seems strange to me that you would discount in advance my opinion as possibly coming from one experienced in planning events in Second Life as you seem to do summarily in the above.[/quote:1e03rsev]
I do not discount any opinion that is genuinely grounded by clear, coherent and precise reasoning. I do not, however, consider mere assertions to have any real value in such a context.
[quote:1e03rsev]We have citizens living in a span of time zones from GMT-8 to GMT+1 or further away if I'm not mistaken. I have had to sit in on SC meetings with 3 participants that had to be conducted at 3AM CET because of the differing time zones and schedules of the participants. I have furthermore experienced almost a full season of RA meetings with just around half of the membership in attendance because of RL scheduling and time zone problems. Do you not think I have experience with the burdersome logistics of scheduling meetings with an international participant body? Do you not further think that you will experience some difficulty in getting up to 7 citizens of this community plus a judge, prosecutor and defense attorney and an unspecified number of marshalls of the peace to be able to turn up at the same time to conduct a court meeting beyond a duration of one hour in order to assess the case of John Random Griefer? Do you not think your problems will be multiplied exponentially when the next case has to be scheduled since John Random Griefer decided to create four alts over the course of a few weeks each of which has to be dealt with on a seperate basis and with a new subset of community members whose calendars need to be scheduled? [/quote:1e03rsev]
(1) We already deal with scheduling problems for our existing branches of government. In spite of scheduling problems, we have (a) a Representative Assembly consisting of five people meeting nearly every week; (b) a Scientific Council consisting of four people meeting intermittently, but that has met twice in the last two weeks; (c) no less than [i:1e03rsev]four[/i:1e03rsev] separate committees on the Colonia Nova project that meet regularly; (d) meetings of the CSDF that take place every week, regularly attended on each occasion by six or seven CSDF members; (e) a seminar series hosted by Rudy Ruml every Saturday, again regularly attended by a goodly number of people; and many more besides.
(2) We are ever expanding our citizenry. We now have 48 citizens, and that looks set to keep growing. The more citizens that we get, the easier that it will be to find people for a jury panel.
(3) Taking into account your original concerns, and suggestions of others, I had suggested that a jury of four might be more realistic. The problems in acquiring a jury of four are likely to be significantly less than in acquiring a jury of seven. The plan would be that seven or eight would be summonsed, and four would be picked from them (in case, for example, one of the parties had a particular connexion with a juror, or it turned out that a juror had a particular connexion with a particular case).
(4) Why do you think that any more than one marshal of the peace will be required at any trial?
(5) You will note that the latset version of the proposals on the old thread to which you responded clearly contemplated having a court hearing only in the unlikely event that a griefer takes the time and trouble, and, in the case of a non-citizen, puts up the requisite security for costs, to respond to an originating notice. For that reason, court hearings, rather than determinations on the papers, would be relatively rare and likely only be used when the parties in question were both serious about the matter.
[quote:1e03rsev]Do I really need to explain it down to this level of detail for you to be able to accept my argument to be even valid?[/quote:1e03rsev]
Yes, of course: bland platitudes and bald assertions are utterly worthless. Only proper, reasoned, detailed discourse has any merit on a matter of this nature.
[quote:1e03rsev]If so then the discussion becomes rapidly too much trouble to be worth it to be frank.[/quote:1e03rsev]
Then why don't you desist in your attempts to unpick what we have spent two and a half months debating and perfecting and accept what two successive meetings of the Representative Assembly has passed unanimously?
[quote:1e03rsev]Is what you are proposing to start out by giving the defendant a high guarantee of a fair trial only to subsequently compromise on this position in the case that it turns out to be too troublesome? In other words those who are fortunate enough to be put on trial first will likely experience a more fair outcome of their trial than those, who are tried subsequently - when the trial by jury system is found out to be too cumbersome logistically to maintain? I am not sure this kind of approach to justice would go down well with anyone subscribing to ideals of fair trials and human rights.[/quote:1e03rsev]
That argument is utterly incoherent: you attempt simultaneously to claim that jury trial is indeed superior to judge alone, then state that, because it may not be practical to have it all the time, we should not have it at all. If something is better, we should have it as much as we can. We do not yet know just how practical that it will be to have trial by jury. We might find out that it can only work occasionally, and we might therefore have to set it so that it is (as in many real-life jurisdictions), used only in the most serious cases. We might find that it simply cannot be done at all, and remove it entirely. But none of that can possibly be a reason [i:1e03rsev]not to try at all[/i:1e03rsev], especially given that it is by no means a foregone conclusion, as I have explained carefully above, that jury trial will inevitably be wholly impractical. If the chance of success is more than merely trivial, the cost of failing having tried only trivially greater than the cost of not trying at all, and the reward of success very great, than what conceivable reason is there not to try the thing in question?
[quote:1e03rsev]None of these rantings actually address my valid proposition that a system be devised by which the caseload is being delegated to judges on the basis of an assessment of the extent to which the judge is internally motivated rather than driven by financial motives. You have furthermore subsequently ignored this proposal completely without ever giving any kind of valid reason why it is not worthy of your consideration.[/quote:1e03rsev]
I expressly stated that I did not fully understand what you had written. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that I did not address the points that you raised. Reading it again, it seems that you are suggesting that judges be allocated cases on the basis of the amount of time that they have available to deal with cases: that seems more like common sense than anything revolutionary. I was certainly not envisaging a system whereby cases were allocated to judges without any regard for their ability to commit time to this project. Did you mean anything other than this obvious point? If so, what, precisely?
[quote:1e03rsev]And how is it exactly that you propose to do anything effective with your judiciary in relation to the problem of John Random Griefer creating multiple anonymous alts and using them sequentially to cause grief to our population? What is it exactly that you propose to do through judicial sanction that will prevent effectively the person behind the avatar to strike again?
Assuming that the answer is nothing - most likely shrouded in an extensive sequence of arguments not particularly relevant to the direct question asked of you - my further question would be why is it worth wasting the time and possibly even wages of the judiciary, marshalls of the peace, four person juries and possibly even a prosecutor to coordinate their calendars to schedule a court meeting to preside over the upkeep of the banishment of an avatar, who will likely never be used again?[/quote:1e03rsev]
I have dealt with this already numerous times. As I have stated numerous times, no judicial system (or for that matter, system of any kind) in SecondLife can render us immune to griefers who create new alts whenever they are banned. Unless the architecture of SL changes, it is an intractable problem. The fact that is an intractable problem, however, is not a reason not to have the judicial system having jurisdiction over [i:1e03rsev]allegations[/i:1e03rsev] of griefing. The common griefer who, when banned, simply creates another alt will almost inevitably just ignore us, in which case there needs to be, as I have stated repeatedly now, no oral hearing, just a very brief determination on the papers by a judge of whether the conduct complained of really is serious enough to merit banishment.
Conversely, there may be people accused of griefing who are wrongly so accused, or at least where, although culpable to some extent, their culpability is limited, and have not come to our sim merely to cause trouble, but have acted somewhat rashly when they are here, who might, but for a system whereby everyone accused of wrongdoing has a right to a trial, be condemned oppressively to banishment without a say in the matter. Any civilised society - and virtual though our environs are, that is exactly what we, the real people who inhabit those virtual environs, between us are - recognises rightly the principle that no person shall be subject to punishment without the right to a trial. What trust can we ask others to place in our fairness and our openness if, for us, justice is only for those who pay to be citizens, or for those who enter into particular sorts of relationships with citizens, with all others being left to the ravages of unmitigated personal authority?
Even if people had the right merely to appeal an otherwise final decision taken by a non-judicial authority-figure, that would still leave at least prima facie final determinations of whether a person should be punished to an entirely non-judicial entity, improperly bypassing all the safeguards necessary and inherent in an independent and impartial tribunal, as required by Art. 10 of the UNHDR, violation of which was the very basis that the Council of which you are a member resubmitted the latest version of the Judiciary Act for rewriting on the last occasion.
[quote:1e03rsev][quote="Ashcroft Burnham":1e03rsev]For those reasons, it most certainly is not a waste of judicial time dealing with abuse cases (whether petty or not), since our ability both to [b:1e03rsev]punish effectively[/b:1e03rsev] the perpetrators thereof by our own means, and our unwaivering commitment to treat alleged such perpetrators fairly are both essential cornerstones of our emerging system of justice upon which our unique and excellent community is founded. [/quote:1e03rsev] (emphasis added)
You use the words but you fail to state how you intend to translate them into action.[/quote:1e03rsev]
I have so stated repeatedly, and you have ignored every such statement. The system that I propose is no less effective at punishing anybody than the system that you propose, or any conceivable system within SL. That is not as effective as we might like, but it is better than useless, since it takes at least [i:1e03rsev]some[/i:1e03rsev] effort for a griefer to create an alt to return, and that griefer may prefer to spend that effort griefing somewhere where he or she has not yet been banned.
But the point is that the benefit of this judiciary is not that it is somehow super-effective at punishing griefers, but that it dispenses those powers of banishment, limited though they are, that we already have in a fair and just way, and it is that fairness and justice, combined with no less effectiveness than a non-judicial system, that is the merit of what I have proposed, and what the Representative Assembly has twice unanimously approved.
[quote:1e03rsev]I fail to see how people's decision to visit a sim is affected significantly by the question of whether they will be banished or not without the right to a hearing. Show me one sim in the universe of SL that has experienced increased visits due to visitors being guaranteed a hearing before being banned?[/quote:1e03rsev]
This is an utterly absurd question since, to my knowledge, there [i:1e03rsev]is[/i:1e03rsev] nowhere in SecondLife other than us that guarantees a fair hearing to those accused of misconduct. There is, therefore, no comparator. My point always was that our community's unique selling point is that we are more than just a themed sim with some friendly people and good events; we are more than just a dispute resolution club for businesspeople who want enforcable contracts; we are the beginnings of something new and unique, an attempt, and a successful one so far at that, to create a true state, true civil society, in a virtual world. That entails so much more than the minimal justice that you propose, so much more than can ever be acheived by confining the operations of our judiciary to a few isolated cases. If our justice does not apply to all, if we do not have full equality before the law, if we do not give everybody the rights to justice and fairness that full access to a properly constituted court system, such as I have designed, entails, then we have failed in our experiment to bring democracy and justice to a virtual world for the first time in the world ever, and failed, not because our project is inherently flawed, but because we will have given up before we started. That is not the spirit in which this community was founded, nor in which this community has grown and prospered over the time that I have been here, nor in which the Represenative Assembly approved my draft of the Judiciary Act unanimously twice in succession, nor the spirit with which we are proposing to grow by enfranchulation and attract a potentially exponentially increasing number of people by that very justice, fairness, openness, democracy and civil soceity that is the very basis upon which we strive to encourage others to join us.
[quote:1e03rsev]Your argument becomes even more contrived when one takes into account that my proposal does not even rob earnest visitors, who consider themselves wrongfully banished of their rightful hearing. All they would need to do is to lodge their appeal with the proper authority.[/quote:1e03rsev]
See above on the requirement for people to [i:1e03rsev]respond[/i:1e03rsev] to notices of banishment for there to be any prospect of an oral hearing, and the importance of having a person's final penalty, whether he or she responds or not, determined by an impartial, independent judge, rather than an adjunct of government, appointed by the legislature or executive.
[quote:1e03rsev]I cannot help but think that if the rest of your judiciary bill is based on argumentation as tenacious yet unfounded as the above then I hope the constitution will help us all.[/quote:1e03rsev]
Not only have I explained precisely how the arguments are not in the least tenuous and unfounded (and, how, in many cases, you have, at the very least, misunderstood many of them), but, as you perfectly well know, the argument above is no more than a deliberately substanceless [i:1e03rsev]ad hominem[/i:1e03rsev] attack with no value whatsoever.
[quote="Ashcroft Burnham":1e03rsev]That may or may not be the case but I thought we were devising a judiciary for the CDS, which is soon to encompass a Roman themed sim.[/quote:1e03rsev]
Is Neufreistadt not the capital of the CDS?
[quote:1e03rsev]Do you propose that the coffers of the CDS should pay 2,700L$ because a particular individual thinks it would be nice to dress everyone up as they do in a British court?[/quote:1e03rsev]
No, I believe that the CDS should pay L$2,700 because robes genuinely enhance the dignity and decorum of a courtroom, because they convey instantly recognisable status upon their wearers, and because a judicial system in which judges are recognisably judges, which bears the visual hallmarks of a real-world judicial system, is more likely to appeal to those who become interested in the whole CDS because of their interest in our judiciary (think, for example, of pictures in magazines) than an unrobed judiciary. Each of those reasons is sufficient on its own.
[quote:1e03rsev][quote="Ashcroft Burnham":1e03rsev]Ultimately, however, although we must of course be careful not to be extravagant and impractical with the designs for our judiciary, what we are planning and seeking to acheive - a professional, independent judiciary for a democratically-governed community in an entirely virtual world - is something that nobody in the world has ever done before. [/quote:1e03rsev]
I could not agree with you more on the above. I hope you still remember them.[/quote:1e03rsev]
Why should I not? What we are seeking to achieve is groundbreaking, and it does not deserve diluting in the name of poorly founded arguments.
[quote:1e03rsev][quote="Ashcroft Burnham":1e03rsev]We are the pioneers of something truly unique and ground-breaking, and we should not, in the name of over-cautiousness, dilute what I hope will one day become renowned the oldest and finest virtual legal system in the world. To be timid rather than bold now is something that we may very well regret in years to come.[/quote:1e03rsev]
That is completely wrong. Nothing will be diluted by rolling out justice one step at a time and trying it in practice rather than by building an elaborate tower of ivory founded on the sand constituted by long, theoretical debates full of assumptions that may appear like facts in the eyes of the writer.[/quote:1e03rsev]
More utterly baseless assertions. I have explained above in great detail exactly why the system that I design, as I have designed it, is as it ought to be, and why the system as you propose it would be utterly inadequate. In any event, are you not admitting by the above that your proposal means that there will be islands of justice admidst a sea of injustice that you imagine somebody perhaps, if anybody feels like getting around to it, slowly populating with more islands one by one until the sea has eventually turned continent? Are you not with what you write above tacitly acknowledging that what you are proposing will result in considerably [i:1e03rsev]less[/i:1e03rsev] justice than what I am proposing? Is that no reason enough in itself to discard what you suggest and adopt what I have proposed, and what has twice been unanimously agreed by our legislature?
You shoud note, incidentally, that the Judiciary Bill as it currently stands includes a proposal for a Public Judiciary Scrutiny Panel. Apart from selecting judges, one of its functions will be to monitor and oversee the judiciary, and write reports on how the system is progressing. Since those who have the power to decide the matter are [i:1e03rsev]already[/i:1e03rsev] in agreement as to the substance of the matter, as they have twice unanimously indicated, would it not be far more appropriate, in the spirit of experimentation that has always been one of our greatest assets, to impliment the judiciary as I propose it and, if and only if substantial problems then arise after sufficient time has been given for our new system to settle in, consider how it might be altered to meet those specific problems? After all, if we do not do that, we will spend a further inordinate amount of time debating the judiciary, when our hard-pressed politicians really need to move on to other pressing concerns.