Judges needed!

[Publius Crabgrass]

I am the newly appointed Chair of the Judiciary Commission, and need help of all CDS citizens.

Section 2(b) of the Judiciary Bill says I am "to determine the total number of Judges of Common Jurisdiction who shall hold office at any given time". Although the RA has appointed one highly qualified Judge (Ashcroft Burnham), I think we need at least three judges. There are at least several reasons for this:

(1) a judge may have a conflict of interest and have to recuse himself/herself from hearing a case;

(2) we may want to allow parties to cases to challenge a judge (either peremptorily --- without having a reason -- or for cause); and

(3) the more judges we have, the lighter the load for all.

I encourage anyone who is interested in serving as a Judge of Common Jurisdiction to contact Claude Desmoulins, the leader of the RA (the RA is the appointing authority until we have a Public Judicial Scrutiny Panel), or Gwyneth Llewelyn, Dean of the SC.

[Ashcroft Burnham]

By "at least three", do I take it that you mean "three for the time being"? You need to specify a particular number, after all

In fact, since we now have a judge (me), applications for judicial office need to be made in the first instance to the Board of the Judiciary Commission for qualification, where those applicants can then be approved as qualified, and then appointed by the PJSP (if it has at least three members), or the Representative Assembly if it does not. I am currently in the process of drafting a Code of Procedure, and will after that have to draft a Code of Judicial Ethics, and, once I have done that, I will be able to get around to the qualification requirements for judges that I will have to publish before I can start accepting applications. I hope also to have some sort of application form. Candidates should expect to have to demonstrate a thorough understanding of our constitution, the Code of Procedure, the Code of Judicial Ethics, aptitude at common law legal reasoning, ande a keen analytic mind. Given that the Chair of the Judiciary Commission has indicated that he believes it important to have at least two more judges, I will open the field for applications as soon as I can, although that may take a few weeks because of the other things that I have to draft.

And, to remind people, although we now have a Chair of the Judiciary Commission, we still need people to stand for election to the PJSP (Public Judiciary Scrutiny Panel - the body that oversees the judiciary (receiving complaints, conducting investigations, writing reports, making recommendations) and also appoints judges who have been qualified by the Board of the Judiciary Commission). Members of the PJSP cannot be judges, the Chair of the JC, members of the SC, members of the RA or the Chancellor. Anyone else is welcome (and encouraged) to apply. Candidates will be selected by means of a popular ballot. There are a total of five positions, although the body can function with as few as three members. Applicants should address their applications to the Dean of the Sceintific Council in the first instance, but only election stands between any given applicant and office (providing that there are at least three applicants, or else elections are likely to be postponed until there are).

[Publius Crabgrass]

The Constitution says I as Judiciary Commission chair should "determine the total number of Judges of Common Jurisdiction who shall hold office at any given time". That number shall be three until further notice.

Until such time as there are qualifications written by the one and only Judge, cannot the RA appoint those whom the SC has qualified?

I think our desire to have a functioning judiciary in place may have made us get a little ahead of ourselves. The constitutional scheme for the judiciary contemplates that we pick a Chair of the Judiciary Commission, then that person decides how many judges we need, then the judges are selected, then the judges meet to elect (plainly "elect" means a vote by more than just one person) a Chief Judge (a lifetime job!) and adopt whatever procedural codes are needed. Instead we now have only one judge selected (before it was decided how many we need) who intends to write the criteria for the selection of the remaining judges, and intends to NOT do so until AFTER the procedural rules are written (by himself), which could be a VERY long time.

[Ashcroft Burnham]

Hmm, this should be in "discussions" not "announcements".