The Crusader (Public Service Announcement)

[NewYorkExpress]

I'm leaving this as an open question to readers as I get acquainted with what I've missed: why is the Russo-Ukrainian war now suddenly a thing when it wasn't before in game canon? I don't want to misjudge, but I was a bit disappointed when I realized it.

(I also want to know who had the bright idea to have Zelensky issue a commissar order, because that's both questionable on several levels and, I'd argue, in very poor taste)

That was me. I think I implied that he canceled it under pressure from the rest of the world, and the Ukrainian Military was largely ignoring that order anyways.

[NewYorkExpress]

I thought Labor was supposed to be the anti-democracy party, but it sure doesn't look like that with the attitude that the Federalist and Peace parties have shown to our Supreme Court.

I'm pretty sure sitting on the bench for seven years and doing literally nothing would be abhorrent to IRL Supreme Court justices.

[NewYorkExpress]

I thought Labor was supposed to be the anti-democracy party, but it sure doesn't look like that with the attitude that the Federalist and Peace parties have shown to our Supreme Court.

I'm pretty sure sitting on the bench for seven years and doing literally nothing would be abhorrent to IRL Supreme Court justices.

This is completely unfair to windjammer. If you insist on making personal attacks on people, make sure it's accurate first. As someone who knows him, I know he puts in the work and is still very able to keep serving the people.

I think YE has made the case for term limits and judicial reform best, even though he doesn't support it.

I thought Labor was supposed to be the anti-democracy party, but it sure doesn't look like that with the attitude that the Federalist and Peace parties have shown to our Supreme Court.

I'm pretty sure sitting on the bench for seven years and doing literally nothing would be abhorrent to IRL Supreme Court justices.

This isn’t exclusive to windjammer fwiw. We’ve averaged a limited number of cases per year since the game’s founding.

Seven years (or more) hearing a only a handful of cases per year and denying cert to half of them is not how the court should be operating.

[NewYorkExpress]

Well it would have been great if any of this was communicated to anyone yesterday, instead of Windjammer just saying "I don't wanna" and denying certiorari. In fact, the court had over two weeks from when the case was filed to now to say something. Now, the plaintiffs in the case didn't do a much better job on that front, I can't deny that. I wouldn't say that this case in particular was handled all that well either, but until you posted there was never any indication that the court was even open to such a thing. And I don't really appreciate being accused of being part of some plot to undermine the court when I've had no role whatsoever in drafting the proposals for court reform, am not a sitting senator, and have never stated any intention to radically alter the court. So if you have a problem with that, take it up with the people who are actually pushing for that.

Now I'm really not trying to be belligerent towards any particular person, and I would actually like to accomplish something productive. The things I said before were under the impression that the court was a hard no on this concept. So if you would like to stop the back and forth here and try to come up with a framework please do message me about it.

Well the same could have gone for us; we weren’t informed that there was going to be an attempt to change the game’s structure ‘in stealth’; even if we started from that point, precedent is, naturally, very important to our Court’s operation. In the 19 years of this game’s history, so far as I can tell, every single case the Court has taken has had both main parties be either

- A player, in either in personal capacity or ex officio
- An organization (legally recognized or otherwise) made up of players
- A government or government subdivision, controlled by players

The only reasonable thing to do here for the Court was to not grant certiorari. Explicitly overturning a fairly fundamental truth about what the Court does in this game - and has for its entire history - when no one even asked us to. The onus is not in the court here to force these arguments; as with any real court, the onus is on the parties to give their strongest arguments for their position so that the Court may scrutinize and probe them. Never even discussing the elephant in the room leaves no choice for us. Of course this takes us to another relevant convention; one which, in fact, is also adhered to by the actual Supreme Court; denials of certiaorari do not have accompanying opinions. Windjammer’s single sentence there is already highly unusual; I don’t think I would have given it. The explanations for this should have been obvious - basically everything I’ve said in these posts is fully public knowledge.

Also, I did not mean to make accusations towards you or to any other individual - I’m merely noting what everything looks like at an overall level from my perspective. The last time I looked at this board, no decision had been published - though we were, at that point, set to choose what, again, was our only reasonable option based on what we were given. Now what I see is that within minutes of that (inevitable) decision, people have been calling for the Court to be burned down and a proposal that is tantamount to impeachment against four of the five justices has suddenly gained a notable amount of support. It’s a very bizarre looking turn of events to me.

Finally, in response to your other points, I want to emphasize: none of my posts here speak for the rest of the justices or for the Court as a whole. I cannot speak to whether or not the other members of the Court are open to a game reform proposal on court cases regarding NPC characters, other than that they are clearly not open to this setup - whereby we agree to the reform first, then figure out what’s in it afterwards. Speaking personally, what I would need to see before I would even be willing to get involved in something like this: put forth a concrete proposal on how such cases would operate, in what circumstances they could be brought forth, etc. Bring a strong consensus of active players on board with such a structure; including, ideally, specific commitments from the GM team as to how they would interact with the system. I ask for this because I would generally prefer not to have heavy handed involvement in a reform plan that has substantial disagreement within the political player base. At that point, I would be willing to get involved and see if such a proposal was workable or could be changed into something workable for adoption by the Court. Again, I can only concretely speak for myself on this subject, though I have some optimism that all of us could at least agree to something. Again, though, at least the initial draft of the details need to come from the active players who want such reform; not from those people going ahead and putting the cart before the road or the town, let alone the poor horse.

I've already stated that the lower NPC courts already exists for criminal matters and can be adapted to handle all NPC related issues. This, to me is within the power of the GM Team to simulate.

If we go by that, technically speaking the judicial reform being proposed might not be necessary in terms of Supreme Court workload. While I would still support term limits, grandfathering in the current justices would be acceptable to me.