[quote="Jon Seattle":1kilefla]1. Do you really believe that there remains a widespread consensus supporting the Judicial Act as it is now? If so, why does this amendment bother you. If you really do have that consensus you can just re-install the act at your first opportunity.[/quote:1kilefla]
There never was, and never will be, come what may, a consensus about what sort of judiciary to have. When we cannot have consensus, we must instead have compromise. What is an acceptable compromise should be determined by the rules of the political system in force at the time that the compromise was made.
The compromise was made when the Judiciary Act was passed: all the legislature agreed that it should be passed, even though it was not (because, of course, it was a compromise) exactly what everybody wanted. Once, according to the proper rules of a political system, a new position is reached, it becomes the status quo, and strong reason is needed to change it (which strong reason had been present, and had been recognised as present under the rules of the political system, in relation to the status quo as it existed before the Judiciary Act was passed). A strong reason must, to avoid unending upheaval of the sort that makes it impossible (or, at best, virtually impossible) for any system to perform the function that it exists to perform at all, be a reason that did not exist at the time that the current status quo came into being. As Pat has pointed out, the judiciary that we now have is precisely what I said all along that we would have (apart from the dangerously oversimplified procedures). All the reasons that are being cited now to destroy the judiciary are reasons that, in so far as they are truly reasons at all, existed at the time that the Act was passed. It is, therefore, wholly improper to destroy something for reasons that existed and were readily discoverable at the time that it was created, and at the time that the people who created it were charged with undertaking a very large amount of work to finish creating it and implementing it.
Furthermore, your question seems to assume that a consensus is required to preserve the status quo, but not radically to change it as you propose. There is no conceivable reason to believe that. Do you believe that you have a consensus for your proposal? Indeed, is your proposal not [i:1kilefla]exactly[/i:1kilefla] the same as the "suspend and amend" option that the Special Commission on the Judiciary, whose creation you supported, decisively rejected (and, indeed, was the only decisive conclusion that it reached)? That is extremely potent evidence indeed that there most certainly is no consensus for what you propose, and far more opposition to it than the more moderate course of retaining the status quo.
[quote:1kilefla]2. If you feel there is no longer community consensus supporting the Judiciary Act, can you impose it without causing widespread disruption in our community? Will it be fine with you if a significant minority (or even a majority) feel uncomfortable?[/quote:1kilefla]
A significant minority will find any given judicial system unacceptable, and, indeed, undoubtedly a significant minority of citizens in real life countries find their own judicial system unacceptable. There can be no doubt whatsoever that, at the very least, a significant minority of citizens would find what you propose unacceptable, yet you seem more than content to impose that on them. Why should the status quo, determined as an acceptable compromise in accordance with the political rules existing at the relevant time, be preserved only if no significant minority opposes it, but radical changes to the status quo made only if they are not universally unpopular? As to widespread disruption, we already have it, courtesy of the anti-judiciary extremists and their abolish at any costs agenda. There is no reason to believe that the disruption will be any less by pandering to those sectional groups, and alienating instead the many strong supporters of the judiciary, rather than preserving the status quo that was brought into effect following a principled compromise made by those in political office at the relevant time, who had available to them, as Pat makes clear, all the information that they could need to predict how the system would turn out.
[quote:1kilefla]3. If you are willing to admit that the current JA has lost the confidence of some citizens (for whatever reason), but believe that some minor adjustments will restore that confidence, what exactly are those changes?[/quote:1kilefla]
As far as I can tell, exactly one person has changed his mind about whether this judicial system is a good idea or not: the rest of its opponents were opponents from the start, and the Act was passed notwithstanding their opposition. The fact that some of them (I refer mainly to Beathan) are extremely angry about that, and will stop at nothing to destroy it, come what may, is not any reason at all to reverse what was decided unanimously by the elected representatives of the people.
Some people's opposition to the present judiciary is utterly immovable (despite, in many cases, reasoned argument whose reasoning they cannot fault), whereas others' (those whose opposition has been less aggressive) may well arise from lack of understanding of the system. That lack of understanding can be remedied by (1) a programme of legal education (of the sort that I always advocated from the very beginning); (2) introductory users' guides (of the sort that I advocated from the very beginning: see my initial thread; Oni has indicated a willingness to write such guides); and (3) letting them see how the system operates in practice, so that they can realise (a) that I am not an insane tyrant bent on banishing people merely because I dislike them or because they have disagreed with me in the debate about a judiciary; (b) that the system that we have, especially with the rules that I originally wrote, is as easy to use, and as easy to understand as a legal system that is truly fair can ever hope to be; (c) that the system that we have is a genuinely fair system that produces carefully-reasoned and balanced results after a full opportunity for both sides to present their case, and after careful, rational, reasoned deliberation by an impartial tribunal; (d) that the courts will not take seriously some of the bizarre claims that Gwyneth and others have imagined (such as people bringing an action against the legislature claiming compensation (or something else) for having passed any given piece of legislation); and (e) that the system will not disregard people's human rights.
Some people also seem to have a strong belief that any institution in which a single person has a substantial amount of power is, for that reason, inherently suspect. I have already proposed ways of addressing these issues with the Special Commissioners proposal that I have made before. Simply appointing two more judges (we have two qualified and able candidates available) would go a long way towards that.
[quote:1kilefla]The US declaration of independence says “.. to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,†I believe that consent is the basis of all legitimate government. This amendment and bill provides the opportunity for JA supporters to regain our consent for their particular approach or to prove that they have not lost our confidence.[/quote:1kilefla]
By "ours", do you mean the legislature's, or the general populace's? The point is that your empirical analysis is flawed: it is not the case that there was, at some point in time, a genuine consensus amongst all or virtually all of the population that the judiciary as we now have it was exactly what they wanted, and that, since that time, a large proportion of those people have radically changed their minds and now no longer believe that. As I noted above, there appears to be only a single person who has changed his mind, and that appears to be because he dislikes common law systems in general. What we had then, and what we still have now, is a compromise, reached by proper means in accordance with the rules of a system designed to produce just such compromises. Some people disagreed with it, but, on balance, those charged with making the decision considered it the best way forward.
If you think that, in consequence of events that have happened since that compromise was forged, a large number of people who once supported the judiciary now oppose it, then that is a contention that ought be tested before being acted upon, since there really is no evidence of that at all. The best possible evidence of people's reactions is how they vote in an election: if they vote overwhelmingly for factions that seek to destroy the judiciary, one can fairly say that people have little confidence in it (although see above on why it is in any event too soon for anybody fairly to judge it, despite what those bent on destroying the system at all costs would have one think). If they vote in large numbers for factions that support the judiciary, then it will be clear that you are wrong.
Why do you consider yourself to have a better mandate now to decide whether to destroy or preserve the judiciary than the Representative Assembly, constituted by members of factions who would just have fought an election one of whose issues was that very question, after the election would have?
Given that I have answered your questions as fully as I am able, I trust that you will now answer all of the questions that I have previously posed for you and that you have not yet answered on this thread similarly fully.
[i:1kilefla]Edit[/i:1kilefla]: Incidentally, it occurs to me that what you propose is akin to levelling Colonia Nova and starting the SPC all over again from scratch, with a differently constituted membership, because a vocal minority of citizens, some of whom had arrived after the theme was chosen, and some of whom had opposed it from the start, loudly complained that they didn't like the Roman theme.
