Entrenched Law

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

So the question originally under discussion in the other thread was what form the more permanent law and provisions should take that are taken from Article II. Several options have been suggested:

A. An "entrenched" portion of el Lexhatx which may only be changed through a more difficult process. I'd suggest just making Title A the entrenched portion, but I'm open to other ideas.

B. A fourth set of laws, in addition to the Covenant, Constitution, and Lexhatx. This seems way too confusing. As much as possible, our law should be very easy to understand. Having two legal codes, one of which is harder to amend, seems pointlessly confusing. It'd also be legislatively hard, since we'd have to think through and sort out how the four different sets of laws interact. Right now, we have the Organic Law which overrules statutes. A bunch of folks want to make the Covenants separate. Do we want to have some statutes that are special and overrule the others? That's not normally how statutes work, and would be pretty confusing!

C. "Entrenched" laws, with any bill capable of being designated as an "entrenched" law that must pass or be repealed by a higher threshold. This seems like the worst possibility, since it will be incredibly confusing, hard to keep track of, and result in a legal code shot through with weird unamendable bits.

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

Nov 26, 2018 13:53:11 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

So the question originally under discussion in the other thread was what form the more permanent law and provisions should take that are taken from Article II. Several options have been suggested:

A. An "entrenched" portion of el Lexhatx which may only be changed through a more difficult process. I'd suggest just making Title A the entrenched portion, but I'm open to other ideas.

B. A fourth set of laws, in addition to the Covenant, Constitution, and Lexhatx. This seems way too confusing. As much as possible, our law should be very easy to understand. Having two legal codes, one of which is harder to amend, seems pointlessly confusing. It'd also be legislatively hard, since we'd have to think through and sort out how the four different sets of laws interact. Right now, we have the Organic Law which overrules statutes. A bunch of folks want to make the Covenants separate. Do we want to have some statutes that are special and overrule the others? That's not normally how statutes work, and would be pretty confusing!

C. "Entrenched" laws, with any bill capable of being designated as an "entrenched" law that must pass or be repealed by a higher threshold. This seems like the worst possibility, since it will be incredibly confusing, hard to keep track of, and result in a legal code shot through with weird unamendable bits.

Eh, I've got no objection in principle to option A, can you give us a draft of what that would look like?

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

Sure. I'll whip up the language tonight.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

The language would be simple enough, adding on a new section 9 to the relevant article.

There shall be a standing and coherent legal code for the nation, called el Lexhatx. The first section of el Lexhatx shall be known as "Title A: Entrenched Law." Bills that add, alter, or remove laws within Title A shall require a two-thirds majority of the Cosa, joined with a majority of the Senats.

I would assume that the bill to pass this would also include a list of provisions to take out of the OrgLaw and add to this new title, plus the necessary reshuffling of el Lexhatx. I can do that too, if this approach is amenable to folks.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

It's been more than a week. Anyone?

This whole "convention" is starting to get almost insulting. We're going to have an almost unchanged draft shoved at us and everyone will be told it was the product of a bipartisan months-long editing process.

[Ian Plätschisch]

Nov 26, 2018 14:54:57 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

Sure. I'll whip up the language tonight.

I was waiting to see what you came up with.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

Nov 30, 2018 13:30:38 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

There shall be a standing and coherent legal code for the nation, called el Lexhatx. The first section of el Lexhatx shall be known as "Title A: Entrenched Law." Bills that add, alter, or remove laws within Title A shall require a two-thirds majority of the Cosa, joined with a majority of the Senats.