Marokai Blue v. ..Atlasia?

[Marokai Backbeat]

Hi Supremes!

There's a bit of an urgent Constitutional dispute being raised that I thought would be prudent to immediately bring up before it caused greater trouble, so I decided to officially sue the Government myself to get this sorted out as quickly as possible.

The Ratification Decentralization Amendment says the following:

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While that allows regions the ability to choose their ratification procedure, it is not completely clear on how we ratify Amendments until regional legislatures do so, leading some to question if it is Constitutional to ratify Amendments at all until that occurs.

At the moment, there is ongoing ratification of the "We Need More Political Parties Amendment" which is being treated with the same ratification procedure that existed prior to the Decentralization Amendment's passing, until regions choose alternate forms of ratification.

The emergency at work here would be: is it constitutionally acceptable to ratify Amendments the old way until new procedures are passed, or is ratification actually just impossible until new procedures are agreed upon?

[bgwah]

Well, if you do decide to sue please be clear about it. Right now this just looks like you're thinking about maybe suing, which obviously will not result in a case.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Yes, I'm suing the government over the allegation I laid out in the first post; I'm just waffly about whether or not I personally actually believe it's the case. But I'm definitely suing so the issue is cleared up, at least.

[bgwah]

Thank you for the clarification.

[bgwah]

Official Atlasia Supreme Court Release
Nyman, DC

Writ of Certiorari
The Atlasian Supreme Court grants certiorari to hear this case.

Schedule
Petitioner has seventy-two hours to file his brief.  It is expected no later than 5:00PM EDT on Tuesday, May 21, 2013.

Respondent has an additional forty-eight hours to file his brief.  It is expected no later than 5:00PM EDT on Thursday, May 23, 2013.

Amicus Briefs will be accepted until 5:00PM EDT, May 21, 2013, unless the filing party can show sufficient need.

Additional time may be granted to either party upon a showing of sufficient need.

A possible period of argument (Q&A) may be scheduled after presentation of the briefs in case any member of the Court has any questions for the parties.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Amicus brief from Inks.LWC

Summary of Facts
Recently, the Ratification Decentralization Amendment (RDA) was ratified, giving regions the choice between hving their legislatures ratify amendments or having public referendum to ratify amendments.
At least one regions' legislatures have not yet chosen which option will be adopted.

Question Presented
Can a region ratify amendments to the Federal Constitution by employing the method that was used prior to the passage of the RDA if that region's legislature has not yet elected to adopt the choice of Art. VII, §1, cl. 3.3c of the current Constitution?

Argument
A region's legislature must elect between options 3a and 3c before said region can ratify a proposed Federal Amendment.

When the RDA passed, it amended the entirety of Art. VII, §1, as evidenced by the language, "Article VII, Section 1 ofhte Constitution shall be amendedto read the following:"[1]

The language of that section was changed from:

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to

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The two options given to the region are as follows:

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Nowhere in Art. VII, §1 could anything be construed to allow a region to hold a week-long ratification vote, as was established under the old version of Article VII, §1.

Clause 3 of the RDA is quite clear that the ratification form must be "chosen by [a region's] legislature", and that if a public referendum is chosen, the length of time for that referendum is to be "determined by the Region's lawmaking process."

Nowhere in the RDA is there any language that would allow for a week-long vote to be taken if that is not what a region's lawmaking body has elected to do.  The amendment does not address the protocol for what should happen if a region does not choose how to ratify a federal amendment, and federal law is completely silent on the matter.  The language outlining week-long votes for ratification was expressly removed by the Senate and supported by a majority in four of five regions.  To allow for week-long votes to continue in the absence of a region's legislative body choosing between options 3a and 3c is simply not constitutional, unless a federal law is passed that outlines the procedure for ratification if a region does not choose a ratification process.

Conclusion
The RDA is silent on the issue; unless there is a federal statute saying otherwise, there is no possible legal grounds to say that a region can ratify an amendment before its legislature has chosen how amendments are to be ratified.

Inks.LWC

[DemPGH]

The Attorney General's Brief

22 May, 2013

     While the RDA (Ratification Decentralization Amendment) does not specify a timeframe or a protocol for regions to select a method of ratification, it is clearly assumed that one of the methods offered would be selected in a timely fashion. If that does not happen, I believe the Constitution grants the Supreme Court right of arbitration. In other words, I believe that because the matter has become a dispute, because regions may invest all or part of their judiciaries in the Supreme Court, which may also settle election disputes, and because a region does not select a method for ratification as per the law, and in the interest of expediency, the Court may settle the matter.
     IV.2-3 of the Constitution says that regions "may" establish legislatures and judiciaries for themselves, but may also defer to federal law or invest this power in the Supreme Court. Since federal law does not make specific stipulations beyond offering two choices, an impasse due to untimeliness or inactivity, if that were ever the case, could not be allowed.
     Otherwise, a region's legislators, or some authority, must move to select a method for ratification; until that happens, the process is gridlocked.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I apologize for my absence during the Leave of Absence I took until a couple days ago, so I'll just pop in to say this before any sort of final decision is made:

Inks' side: Inks is right that the Amendment in question basically wiped the prior ratification procedure from the Constitution. It wasn't an addition to ratification procedure, but basically a total rewrite of it, granting regions the power to pass a law that specifically lays out ratification procedure of their choosing, but within certain reasonable limits.

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Unfortunately, the problem is that this would seem to imply that, until a regional government specifies ratification procedure, there is actually no way at all to amend the Constitution.

DemPGH's argument: While there is no specified way to allow ratification under the prior procedure in the meantime, it's fairly obvious that, while it's a silly oversight, it's clearly not within the spirit of the Constitution to allow literally no Amendments to the Constitution at all just because of the slow-moving behavior of regional lawmaking.

While it's not in the most-recently passed Amendment, this is how Amendments have always occurred, and occurred in this case as well, clearly gathering public support. Ratification passed by strong margins in the regions, and even if it wasn't don't under regionally sanctioned law, necessarily, it was opened by the leaders of those regions as normal and supported by the population.

During the Midwest election dispute last year, there was no actual Constitutional rule that allowed us to open elections at any other point; but this was clearly not the regional constitution's intention, because otherwise, the regional government would've just broken down. The Midwest asked you, the Supreme Court, to allow a special exemption to open new voting booths that weren't specifically sanctioned, but were simply necessary to get things working again.

The government of Atlasia is basically asking you to make that sort of decision again. Though it's not specifically sanctioned, there's nothing untoward at work here, and this is basically just a procedure mistake that is in the process of being fixed, but for the sake of expendiency, the Attorney General asks you to grant a special constitutional exemption of sorts, just to keep the wheels turning and allow the ratification to stand.

My request: If you are not swayed by the Attorney General's argument, but are uncomfortable with Inks' hardline interpretation that would make ratification impossible until new laws were passed, I ask you to allow the regions to at the very least, as a middle-ground option, pass a resolution officially in support of the ratification's results. This allows regional governments to still officially approve of the ratification, without fully making new ratification procedure yet, essentially satisfying the meaning of the most recently passed Decentralization Amendment.

At the least, I would ask that, while there is an issue to be solved here, please allow ratification to stand until new ratification procedures are passed by the regions, as making ratification impossible is clearly not how the Constitution is intended to work.

Thanks for your patience during my absence.

[bgwah]

Thank you. I am discussing this with the rest of the court --- should there be no questions, I hope to have a decision soon.

[bgwah]

The Court has come to a unanimous decision in favor of the federal government.

We considered the Ratification Decentralization Amendment that caused this dilemma, specifically Section 3:

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If a region has not chosen how to ratify amendments since the passing of the Ratification Decentralization Amendment, it is the court's opinion that the region has, through inaction, chosen the status quo method of ratifying amendments. Specifically, this means a region will continue to ratify amendments to the federal constitution by having a majority of the People voting vote in favor in a public poll that lasts one week and is administered by the Governor of the Region or other officer as the Law of the Region may provide.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I thank the Court for their decision. I'm pleased this was all resulted pretty swiftly.