Public Discussion on the Supreme Court Cases (Avoid Cluttering Case Threads)

[Former President tack50]

While the bump was in relation to another case, I'm kind of surprised the Supreme Court has taken no action on tack50 vs Wulfric; whether to dismiss or accept the case.

[Former President tack50]

Honorable Justices,

I would like to ask for greater oversight on Discord. All of the above users, were involved in Discord discussions, which were to some extent, racist. They had said that immigrants have poor grammar, and compared someone's political views to the caste system, this was even more offensive, given that, that someone was Hindu. I would like for the justices to issue a broad ruling on this unregulated off-site messaging app. Since, Congress has already failed to take action, I feel that this is the only place, where action on this issue, can truly occur.

Thank you for your time,
SNJC

Is it just me, or does the plaintiff sound as if he is asking the Supreme Court to pass a new law banning racism?

From his later posts, I believe he is instead trying to get the Supreme Court to ban Discord lol

[Former President tack50]

Bumping this for further discussion of the Ben Kenobi cases.

Speaking of Ben Kenobi v Peebs, yesterday night I realized that Kenobi's case made no sense whatsoever as there is no possible remedy to what he is seeking. A civil case against Peebs should have been filed back in March when Kenobi was moved against his will, not now.

However, if Kenobi wants, a criminal case might make a bit more legal sense (still not much, but more sense). Peebs should not be sued civilly, but instead sued criminally for Misconduct in Public Office.

(h) Misconduct in Public Office. This offence shall be defined as the abuse of office for provable personal gain by cabinet officials or deputy cabinet officials.

Of course this has several problems:

1) The person in charge of the investigation and pressing charges would be Attorney General Truman as I believe private citizens can't sue criminally. I definitely can't imagine Truman suing Peebs unless there was a ton of evidence against her, and the evidence is flimsy at best considering all of Peebs' actions were 100% legal at the time. (Of course if the evidence was strong enough and he didn't handle this appropiately Truman could face impeachment or even be sued himself! This is not the case though, Truman should be safe.)

2) Ben Kenobi would be required to prove not just that Peebs abused her office; but that she did so for "provable personal gain". While I can think of some excuses to try and fulfill that requirement, they would be just that, excuses. I don't think there is a provable personal gain here.

Still; I would recommend Kenobi to go with the criminal angle rather than the civil one. That one would at least make legal sense instead of ending up with Ben Kenobi embarrasing himself in front of the Justices. It also has a 1% chance of getting Kenobi's desired outcome, as opposed to 0% with the curent case.

[Former President tack50]

I ask that Mr. Tack please be careful in making arguments around deregistration and the AZ vs Peebs case, for I do not want another unnecessary deregistration crisis on our hands.

For the record, it has never been my intention to create a possible crisis by my lawsuit. If the outcome somehow results in a huge mess and a huge crisis I will strongly and personally urge Congress to act as fast as possible to fix any issues.

I do think that is an unlikely situation though. Even under the worst dystopian endings I can think of, they are nowhere near game-breaking.

[Former President tack50]

My argument would be that duel losers are being stripped of their right to vote without due process and without their consent via forced deregistration

If someone participates in a duel and the conditions of said duel clearly state the one who loses must deregister for x period of time, they give their consent when they agree to the duel. Saying they are stripped of their right to vote without their consent is incorrect.

My point is that said condition is not a legally enforceable one. Dueling would still be legal through "gentlemen's agreement" kinds of deals; but that anything other than posting a "proper" deregistration post in the New Register thread is not a valid deregistration.

[Former President tack50]

I have to say, Suburban's new case is very underwhelming compared to his magnum opus in SNJC v. Tack50, MB, LT and Adam Griffin. Though maybe criminalizing Discord would have been for the better

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=320061.0

[Former President tack50]

On a sidenote from my case, I will note that Roe v. ZuWo (2016) is not the only court case in Atlasian history dealing with abortion, even if it is the one that is more directly tied to it.

The extremely old court case of Bono v. Atlasia I (2005) also dealt with abortion (and pregnancy in general), with a similar outcome to that of Roe v. ZuWo; although at the time it was much more tied to the issue of whether the federal government was a government of limited enumerated powers or not; given how badly written the First Constitution was.

I actually planned initially to use that case to justify the standing of my client, but after reading that case more in-depth I realized I could not use it for that purpose (plus the court gave certiorari anyways by the time I realized that).

[Former President tack50]

So, how long until we can start launching impeachment proceedings against all 5 justices? 

[Former President tack50]

Looking at tmthforu v. Fremont, an interesting question for the court to answer I suppose will be "Do the preambles of bills count as legally binding legislation?"

That also reminds me Atlasia rarely if ever writes preambles for bills, though from what little I have seen US bills rarely have preambles in the first place anyways so it is fitting.

[Former President tack50]

Commenting on the Politics Fan v. The South case now that it is over, beyond the questions about abortion I have 2 extra things to say.

1: Point 1 of the ruling is absolutely massive, essencially ruling standing as meaningless in Atlasia. This is really the decision that will have the most impact. It is a shame Reactionary is not around to see this, I imagine he would be angry at the justices for this

2: I am surprised at how many "open questions" this ruling still leaves. The biggest of them is "Does the power to regulate abortion fall to the federal or the regional governments?". While the answer is fairly predictable given the long history of sentences on that area, it is still technically an open question.

I also do wonder whether the ruling means pre-reset precedent applies or not, though I imagine the ruling Bacon King commented for pre-Atlasia precedent (ie before 2004) would also apply to pre-reset precedent (2004-2015); where it is not automatic precedent but still extremely strong arguments, especially when the constitutional points in question are identical or functionally identical.

[Former President tack50]

It always was stupid to have standing in my view & was extremely easy to get around; I believe in the past BaconKing (or perhaps someone else) simply said they were an Attorney for a women denied an abortion- as this is a simulation who other than the GM could stop that?

Well, you could have the opposite judgement, and claim that GM approval is a requirement for such a lawsuit to happen. And to be honest, I would agree, especially now that standing has been overturned, suing on behalf of an NPC should require GM approval first.

Standing in Atlasia has been invoked very inconsistently, though looking back at pre-reset tells me that the ruling here is just reaffirming the status quo and previous rulings.

From what I can tell the only time Atlasia had standing as a formal requirement was for a short while between 2009 and 2010, following from the ruling Purple State v. Lief. Apparently in such ruling (2-1) the majority made up an elaborate doctrine regarding standing.

However the court decided to overturn the standing requirement just a year later in Atlasia v. Libertas.

Of course, given that a decade has passed these cases are essencially meaningless now, as only Yankee and 2/5 justices were there to watch it live; plus the obvious caveats I mentioned earlier regarding pre-reset precedent not being automatically applicable and what not.

Reading the opinion in Atlasia v. Libertas (not sure if the justices actually read that one in fact ) the ruling from Marokai at the time is very similar to the one from now. Basically arguing that since Atlasia is a government simulation, standing does not make much sense.

Though for what's worth Marokai's opinion was a lot shorter

There is also an opebo dissent on Purple State v. Lief, though he basically just claims he disagrees and claims imposing an standing standard is judicial activism (which to be fair, it was)

[Former President tack50]

Preambles have had an effect over law in other jurisdictions. The preamble to Australia's constitution is an act of the British Parliament creating the Commonwealth. It literally established the creation of national self government. How is this relevant to Atlasia? It's just a relevant as Truman's citation of the legal impact of the preamble to the USA's constitution. US Law isn't Atlasian law anymore than Australian law is Atlasian law.

I mean, if we are going to go through that route I could cite a very high profile RL Spanish court case that says the exact opposite, that preambles are not legislation and do not have any legal effects

(the court did rule that they were judicially reviewable anyways though, as they tend to influence how to interpret legislation. I could go more into this if prompetd to do so but I won't for now)

[Former President tack50]

Not sure where to post this really, but there is a precedent case that is interesting with regards to both the tmth case and the Fairbol case. It is also a hilarious case and came close to being the single worst court decision in Atlasian history but still.

The case in question would be Young Tweed v. DoFE (2012)

With regards to the Fairbol case

This is fairly easy to explain. In this case, Tweed wanted to overturn the results of the June 2012 presidential election, not because of any election errors, but because Napoleon winning put in danger the "Promote the General Welfare and Equality of the forum members" part of the constitution; which was blatantly false.

Still, considering the court did take this case, I guess you could make an argument for the Fairbol one; though his case is even weaker than the one Tweed presented lol. In any case, in my opinion it is clear the court did things wrong in the Tweed case so if the court is going to take it as precedent, it should be only to overturn it.

With regards to the tmth case

Here the correlation would actually be a positive one for tmth.

When making his case, Tweed used the preamble of the Atlasian Constitution at the time to make his case that Napoleon should not be legally allowed to become president.

For better or worse, the court did not really look into this in its opinion, but given how it did give certiorari; we can assume the court did see something that was at least justicable in the preamble.

There might be other, better cases dealing with preambles, but I am not aware of them.

[Former President tack50]

Oh yes, I remember that election and the ensuing case!  (AFAIK Tweed was also the only presidential candidate to upload "campaign speeches" of him on his webcam up on YouTube, which for the most part said speeches were profanity-laden rants but it was still pretty interesting.)

Do pre-reset court cases carry precedent, though?

Well, my abortion case did answer the question with regards to pre-2004 precedent:

Again, the intention of our Constitution’s authors is clear: inclusion of identical language means our own judiciary can look to its real-world United States counterpart for guidance. This does not mean real-world precedent applies to our nation in any meaningful way, of course, but it is a natural element of common law judicial systems that we can look to other common law systems for guidance whenever no controlling precedent exists. Using this guidance, combined with the intention of our founders, indicates that a general right to abortion access does exist.

It would be logical from this to argue that the same applies to pre-reset cases (in fact, the argument would be even stronger for those as they are more relatable to the current iteration of Atlasia). They are a "very persuasive argument", at least as long as the constitutional articles in question are the same or functionally the same; but they are not really binding precedent.

Also with regards to the Tweed case, it is worth noting the respondent disagreed with the notion that preambles were justiceable or binding legislation at all. Still, with the decision being literally 3 lines it is very hard to draw much from the Tweed case but it is still a sort of precedent.

[Former President tack50]

I know I am way too late but given the issue has seen a small resurgence, I will note there is some precedent for the Kansas irredentism, as back in pre-reset days the Midwestern region claimed parts of other regions, most notably the state of New Mexico from the Pacific region.

A quick look at the 2 regional constitutions verifies this:

4th Pacific Constitution: https://talkelections.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Fourth_Constitution_of_the_Pacific_Region

4th MidWestern constitution: https://talkelections.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Fourth_Midwest_Constitution

These irredentialist claims seem to date back all the way to 2006 in fact, with what seems to be a decade of inaction: https://talkelections.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Midwest_Pacific_Irridentialist_Proposition

Of course given one of the justices was directly involved in the irredentialist claims I suppose everyone already knew this and much more

Still I think the Fremont Kansas expansion is no different than the Midwest claiming New Mexico

[Former President tack50]

Here go my thoughts for now on the Lincoln case.

1. I guess I now know why Wulfric was judged to be mentally unfit to serve in a jury

I actually agree more with his side of the argument than with Truman's (I do not plan on publishing any amicus briefs at least until after the election has been certified). But he is doing a very poor job at explaining his arguments.

2. While it benefits my party; I believe justice Bacon King has made a mistake in not issuing an injunction.

Bacon King claims in his refusal for an injunction that:

For such an injunction to be justified, a plaintiff must demonstrate that it is necessary in order to prevent substantial and irreparable violations of the constitution that could otherwise occur.  It must occur only when the potential harm from a failure to act is more serious than the harm inherent to any judicial action that might alter the outcome of an election.

It is very obvious to me that if the election were to continue under the revised rules, if the courts were to end up ruling in Wulfric's favour; the election results themselves would be unconstitutional. Therefore the election should have been allowed to run under the previous rules, with an injunction being issued.

In my view, pretty much any argument made against election laws so close to a regional election should be more than enough to issue an injunction, so as to not cast any doubt over the legality of the results; unless the argument being made is such that certiorari should be denied.

Unless his argument is to be interpreted as him denying certiorari (which does not seem to be the case) or that he plans on issuing a definitive ruling (including time for any appeals towards the full SC!) in under 48 hours; an injunction should have been issued.

[Former President tack50]

I really don't see how Bacon King's ruling had any more substance than a hackish personal opinion to benefit his party. #IllegitimateJudge #ImpeachBKNow!

It seems Bacon King is here to prove he was never fit to serve on the court.

This is what happens when one side forces people to come back to Atlasia by promising them a seat.

I would ask you to not question Bacon King's impartiality. If Atlasia's supreme court has been characterized by anything it is by being 100% impartial with the judges judging based purely on the merits of the law.

You can disagree with the ruling of course; but I would 100% refrain from questioning BK's impartiality.

[Former President tack50]

Surprised to see an injunction granted for the Ninja case but not the Wulfric one (which I personally found more reasonable).

Anyways I guess this means that (big surprise!!!) the Supreme Court is an actually impartial tribunal like it has been for almost 18 years.

[Former President tack50]

Bumping this in case it is needed

[Former President tack50]

Is there any evidence that the information was posted against the person's will, as the law says?

Trust me I wouldn't be bringing the case up if LT had received consent from the "victim" to post their personal information

[Former President tack50]

If the responsability of saving Lincoln from communism has fallen to Wulfric, I think the proletarian revolution is very likely to suceed

[Former President tack50]

I am very inactive in Atlasia these days, but I will say 3 things on the windjammer thing:

1) I fully take responsability for messing up this case and publicly apologize to the victim involved. It is my fault that LT will walk away free

2) I disagree with the ruling of the court. There is certainly a place for the "speedy trial" clause; but in my view it basically refers to the statute of limitations for crimes. Now, these aren't set in current law, so Congress could certainly reform this if needed. Probably something we should add to the criminal code. 3 months I will say would be ironically a reasonable timeframe irl (escaling for Atlasia time vs RL time), but in game I think it is too short and should probably be closer to 6 months or a year even.

3) There is no reason to impeach any Justice, including Windjammer. I'll vote nay in impeachment if it comes to it