Beck v. Atlasia

[Oakvale]

Members of the Court,

I am petitioning for writ of certiorari in regards to a case in which I have offered my services as counsel.

My client, a member of a criminal organisation with ties to the white supremacist movement, is currently incarcerated in a federal penitentiary in Lee, Virginia, following his conviction for a brutal and unprovoked assault on two gay men in Kansas City, Missouri. There is no doubt as to my client's guilt in this matter and he has shown no remorse for his vile actions.

Mr. Beck, a resident of Kansas, was charged by federal prosecutors and sentenced to ten years in prison under statute establishing sentencing schedules on 'hate crimes' as introduced into Atlasian law in the Hate Crimes Prevention Act (2020).

The Court has ruled previously that the establishment of 'hate crimes' in law is contrary to the fundamental principles enshrined in the Atlasian Constitution.

It is my assertion that the Hate Crimes Prevention Act is in egregious violation of the Constitution of Atlasia as established by longstanding precedent set by this Court. I thus ask that it be struck down in its entirety.

I eagerly await the Court's decision on certiorari.

With regards,

[Oakvale]

Are the Justices aware of this?

[windjammer]

This has been seen

[Oakvale]

This has been seen

Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice.

[windjammer]

Writ of Certiorari

The Supreme Court of Atlasia grants certiorari to hear the question of whether Hate Crimes Prevention Act violates the constitution..

Schedule

Petitioner has seventy-two hours to file his brief.  It is expected no later than 4:00PM EDT on  Friday, March 19, 2021.

Respondent has an additional seventy-two hours to file his brief.  It is expected no later than 4:00PM EDT on Monday, March 22, 2021.

Amicus Briefs will be accepted until 4:00PM EDT on Tuesday, March 23, 2021.

Additional time may be granted to either party, and the right of either party to respond to the filed briefs may be granted upon request.

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

[Oakvale]

Members of the Court,

I trust that the Court will be pleased that the existence of directly applicable judicial precedent will, mercifully, allow me to be relatively concise. The Hate Crimes Prevention Act was signed into law in October 2020, amending §4 c.4 of the Reforming Criminal Law Act of 2018 by repealing the clause in its entirety:

4. 18 U.S. Code § 249 imposing an alternative sentencing schedule for “hate crimes” is hereby repealed.

The Hate Crimes Prevention Act - hereafter HCPA - thus reinstated an alternative sentencing schedule for 'hate crimes' as provided for in prior law through the former 18 U.S. Code §249, that is crimes judged to have been motivated by the actual or perceived ethic or national origin, religious affiliation, gender identity, disability or sexual orientation of the victim.

Under present Atlasian statute as a result of the HCPA, 'hate crimes' are therefore treated differently under the law than otherwise identical crimes wherein the victim did not fall into one of the protected categories prescribed by law. The Court has previously ruled that 'hate crime' laws are in violation of the Constitution of Atlasia. I will refer to the Court's ruling in the landmark Snowstalker v. The Midwest (2014).

As an aside, I would note that while this case was decided by the Court under a prior iteration of the Constitution, the relevant text remains unchanged and thus the relevant constitutional principle must thus remain similarly unchanged and applicable to the present circumstances.

Snowstalker v. the Midwest concerned the passage of a sweeping act aimed at protecting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens that was enacted on a regional level by the former Midwest region. The Midwest has, of course, since been - in the majority - succeeded by the region of Fremont. Upon the passage of the Midwest region's Fitzgerald-Cris-Sol Compromise, LGBT Equality, Hate Crimes and Suicide Prevention Act - hereafter simply the LGBT Equality Act - citizen Snowstalker filed suit alleging that the Act was unconstitutional. After careful consideration of the facts of the case, and a compelling argument from the defense attorney at the time, the Court unanimously upheld the petitioners complaint and the Act was found null and void in its entirety.

I would furthermore note that, in an indication of how egregious the Constitutional violation of 'hate crime' statute is, the Court's unanimous ruling was issued at a time when both conservative and liberal Justices sat on the bench, demonstrating the clarity of such a violation regardless of personal views or partisan affiliation.

The LGBT Equality Act was a far more sweeping - and, it must be said, far broader violation of the Constitution - than the HCPA. However, the relevant clause introduced the concept of 'hate crimes' into regional statute:

1) Physically [sic] assault, verbal abuse and sexual harassment will also be prohibited when the motives for it are done on the basis and intent of the person's sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability. Anyone seen violating this law will be fined, imprisoned on bail, or face a criminal lawsuit based on the seriousness and bodily harm from the incident.

I will here quote at length from the Court's unanimous ruling:

[...] the problematic issue of creating a special category of crime based not on the act itself but on the identity of the victim and an unprovable interpretation of motive becomes apparent.

and:

The petitioner notes that -

Some minds, sadly, foster hateful thoughts which may translate to violent action--but hateful thought, speech, or writing simply cannot be considered a crime just because it is combined to a physical or sexual crime to form a "hate crime", nor will the outlining of "hate crimes" end bigotry. "

The Court is inclined to agree. The creation of "hate crimes" - and here we will we do something which the authors of the LGBT Equality Act refused to do at any point and define the term, as a crime (in this instance harassment, assault, murder etc.) that is treated differently to a functionally identical crime solely because of the characteristics of the victim - pose clear problems under two articles of our constitution. The most obvious is another freedom of speech violation - while, to use the most obvious example, physical assault is obviously illegal, punishing a perpetrator under a different class of crime due a perceived personal bigotry constitutes a gross violation of the right to the freedom of expression - the petitioner, correctly in the opinion of the Court, notes that while the Constitution does not explicitly guarantee freedom of thought, the right can be logically assumed given that speech is the expression of thought. We cannot presume to know the motives behind crimes in all cases, but even where the evidence is apparently ironclad, criminalizing a bigot for their bigotry in addition to their crime is an infringement on an Atlasian citizen's most fundamental right - the right to hold beliefs and opinions that are immoral, abhorrent or distasteful. The unfortunate reality that sometimes these prejudices manifest themselves in violence against vulnerable groups does not mean that lawmakers can legislate against people holding distasteful or even potentially dangerous beliefs.

In Snowstalker v. The Midwest, the Court furthermore ruled that the creation of specific 'hate crimes' in statute violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution:

The Court also finds the creation of specific 'hate crimes' dubious due to violations of Art VI., cl.3, the 'equal protection' clause, which guarantees all citizens equal protection under the laws of the nation. We pose the following example - if a criminal assaults and kills a citizen in the street, he will be arrested, convicted and imprisoned for this crime. If a homophobic or racist criminal assaults and kills a sexual or ethnic minority in the street, under this law he would be arrested, convicted and imprisoned under an entirely different law. But the former victim is no less dead than the latter - yet, given that these could potentially be considered two different crimes, the latter perpetrator may receive an entirely different - and presumably greater - sentence. This is, surely, a violation of the right of equal protection to any victim of a crime who does not happen to fall into one of the special categories named in this law.

The Court concluded:

But 'hate crime' legislation's violation of the constitutional right to equal protection is, in fact, greater than that. Perversely, a doubtless well-intentioned law intended to ensure 'equality' in fact infringes on the right to equal protection of perpetrators of 'hate crimes'. To use our previous scenario, in which we outlined how charging two people differently for identical crimes based entirely on the victim's personal characteristics, the violation of the perpetrator's right to equal protection is apparent - they are being charged under a different law, and will be subject to a potentially different sentence, because of who their victim happened to be[.]

Members of the Court, the above opinion remains no less applicable to the HCPA than when a former region attempted to introduce the concept of a special class of victim into the law more than half a decade prior.

Any decent person is rightly appalled and revolted by the crimes of bigots who victimize people on the basis of their personal characteristics. No one would disagree that my client in this case, an unrepentant thug, should be punished with the full force of the law. But we are not here today to argue about whether in fact, 'hate crimes' should, in a utopian world, be treated differently to other comparable criminal acts. The matter before the Court is whether it is possible, under our Constitution, to do so. That is all there is to it.

We submit that, based on longstanding precedent, it is in gross violation of the Constitution of Atlasia to introduce an alternative sentencing schedule for 'hate crimes'. To do so represents an assault on the most fundamental freedoms guaranteed to Atlasian citizens: that of equal protection under the law - to both the perpetrator and the victim - and the right to free thought, no matter how contemptible or grotesque those thoughts may be. The freedom to hold extremist, repulsive views is the price that we pay for ensuring the freedom of all Atlasians from government overreach. That such views may, tragically, sometimes lead to violent act is undeniable. But it is irrelevant. There are many other motives for violence. The Court will note that we, in the majority, do not specifically criminalize those.

I will conclude with a final citation of the 2014 case:

The Court finds, due to both freedom of speech and clear violation of the equal protection clause, that there is no grounds in the Constitution for the establishment of 'hate crimes' in law as distinct from 'normal' crimes, and we thus find [...] the Act contrary to the Constitution of Atlasia.

I today respectfully ask the Court to uphold precedent, and the rights enshrined in the Constitution, and to strike down the Hate Crimes Prevention Act in its entirety.

I thank the Court.

[windjammer]

I must admit I am fairly surprised by Snowstalker vs the midwest being used as some kind of precedent against hate crimes bills. To me what this case has established, it is a precedent against poorly written laws that could be striken down by the court. I guess I will have to look at it again.

[...] the problematic issue of creating a special category of crime based not on the act itself but on the identity of the victim and an unprovable interpretation of motive becomes apparent.

I really don't understand the point you are making about how someone being killed because he was being gay is unprovable? If for example someone is targeting particularly gay people to kill them, there are many proofs that could prove his homophobic intentions. For example, trapping particularly gay men to kill them, making many trapps against them.

How is it more difficult to prove someone got killed because he was being gay than someone being killed intentionnally? It is the role of the trial to successfully determine the true motives of the offender don't you think?

[ilikeverin]

Do you believe there is ever a time when motive may be taken into account when determining criminal penalties? For example, may a municipality or region create a law that makes it illegal to possess tools that can be used to break into a home with the intent to break into a home? Or, consider the idea of a politician who receives a priceless vase as a gift. Should the person giving the politician that vase with the intent of restoring to the politician a priceless family heirloom be punished just the same as a person giving the politician that vase with the intent of influencing the politician's voting behavior on an upcoming bill?

[Oakvale]

I thank the honorable Justices for their questions and, if the Court will grant me the indulgence, will respond tomorrow to these important points.

[Oakvale]

I must admit I am fairly surprised by Snowstalker vs the midwest being used as some kind of precedent against hate crimes bills. To me what this case has established, it is a precedent against poorly written laws that could be striken down by the court. I guess I will have to look at it again.

[...] the problematic issue of creating a special category of crime based not on the act itself but on the identity of the victim and an unprovable interpretation of motive becomes apparent.

I really don't understand the point you are making about how someone being killed because he was being gay is unprovable? If for example someone is targeting particularly gay people to kill them, there are many proofs that could prove his homophobic intentions. For example, trapping particularly gay men to kill them, making many trapps against them.

How is it more difficult to prove someone got killed because he was being gay than someone being killed intentionnally? It is the role of the trial to successfully determine the true motives of the offender don't you think?

It's true that one of the issues raised in the precedent-setting case - that the law in question was so poorly written as to be de facto unenforceable, does not apply here. However, the Court ruled that the provision imposing 'hate crime' penalties was inherently in violation of the Constitution and noted that it would be possible that, had the rest of the bill been better crafted, some of the legislation may have stood. As regards motive, it is undeniably true that distinguishing both a personal antipathy - and whether that personal antipathy was the deciding or primary factor in the selection of a victim - is a more subtle and difficult question than whether the crime simply took place. However, the Court also ruled:

Even, as noted, where motive is obviously distinguishable the equal protection violation is not lessened - there is still an untenable situation where two people can receive different treatment under the law for the same act.

The Court finds, due to both freedom of speech and clear violation of the equal protection clause, that there is no grounds in the Constitution for the establishment of 'hate crimes' in law as distinct from 'normal' crimes, and we thus find §2 of the Act contrary to the Constitution of Atlasia.

Do you believe there is ever a time when motive may be taken into account when determining criminal penalties? For example, may a municipality or region create a law that makes it illegal to possess tools that can be used to break into a home with the intent to break into a home? Or, consider the idea of a politician who receives a priceless vase as a gift. Should the person giving the politician that vase with the intent of restoring to the politician a priceless family heirloom be punished just the same as a person giving the politician that vase with the intent of influencing the politician's voting behavior on an upcoming bill?

Judges will, of course, take motive into account when considering the sentence imposed - consider the cliche of a starving man stealing a loaf of bread.

The issue with this legislation - and the reason for its fundamental incompatibility with Atlasian constitutional principles - is that it both violates the right to equal protection under the Constitution for both victim and perpetrator and that it represents a punishment of bigoted thought. In this case, my client should, we would all surely agree, be punished for a vicious and unprovoked act of violence. We have laws on the statute books to allow for just that. He is then, in addition, having his sentence extended due to his repugnant personal views. This would not happen to someone who would have carried out an identical attack with the intention of, for example, simple robbery.

I'd posit the following suggestion to the Court: suppose a plutocratic government, in a bid to protect its supporters, were to pass laws which imposed harsher sentencing schedules for assaults on billionaires. Clearly this would be a constitutional absurdity, creating a protected category of victim based on their characteristics and violating the constitutional rights of those that would be sentenced under such a law. Suppose then that such laws further determined that membership in socialist organisations was an indicator of a deep personal antipathy to the wealthy and necessitated a longer prison sentence.

I do not mean with the above hyperbolic example to diminish the issues that face ethnic and sexual minorities - but the role of criminal sentencing is not to attempt to address longstanding social and economic problems in a roundabout way by deciding that society will arbitrarily privilege one group above another in a misguided attempt to level the historical playing field. That is the job of politicians and policy makers.

As I stated in my brief to the Court, the role of the judiciary, in my view, is not to decide whether government should pass such legislation, however socially desirable some may find it. It is to decide whether government can.

I thank the Court, and would further query whether the Attorney General intends to file a defense for the state. I note that the deadline set by the Court in its grant of certiorari has passed.

[windjammer]

Thank you for your answers oakvale. I will carefully look at your statement and will go back to you if necessary.


Truman?

[Bacon King]

It is troubling that the respondent has not acknowledged this case in the three weeks since certiorari was granted...

[windjammer]

Truman really this is starting to be way too long.

[Oakvale]

May it please the Court,

I would humbly request that, at this late stage in proceedings, the Court simply note that the state seemingly declined to appear to defend the legislation in question and proceed with a ruling.

[Mike Thick]

May it please the Court,

I will be representing the state in this matter, on behalf of the Attorney General.

I humbly request an extension from the Court until Sunday evening. I apologize for inconveniencing the Court further, and I understand that the state has been slow on the draw until now. However, I did not expect to be involved in this case until earlier today, and I need some time to research the legal issues at hand and compose a brief.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

May it please the Court,

I will be representing the state in this matter, on behalf of the Attorney General.

I humbly request an extension from the Court until Sunday evening. I apologize for inconveniencing the Court further, and I understand that the state has been slow on the draw until now. However, I did not expect to be involved in this case until earlier today, and I need some time to research the legal issues at hand and compose a brief.

Confirming this.

[Oakvale]

Petitioner has no objection to Mr. Bessell representing the state or the extension requested.

We would request the right to respond to the defense's brief despite the considerable passage of time between the grant of certiorari and its presentation.

[windjammer]

Petitioner has no objection to Mr. Bessell representing the state or the extension requested.

We would request the right to respond to the defense's brief despite the considerable passage of time between the grant of certiorari and its presentation.

Granted

[Mike Thick]

I. INTRODUCTION

Greetings, Justices. I will sum it up here: The HCPA is constitutional. It does not punish bigoted thought, it punishes acts driven by bigotry — it merely takes the motives of defendants into account in accordance with decades of legal tradition. There is ample judicial precedent from real-life cases affirming its constitutionality.

We will begin by noting that we do not dispute Mr. Beck's standing to file suit. In Atlasia, we must take some creative liberties in order to keep things functioning. If fictional appellants are denied standing, it will become extremely difficult to challenge unconstitutional laws only affecting NPCs.

Now, onto the HCPA.

II. CONSTITUTIONALITY OF “HATE CRIME” SENTENCING SCHEDULES

The state refers the Justices to Wisconsin v. Mitchell, a 1993 U.S. Supreme Court Case concerning the constitutionality of hate crime statutes. The case was brought by Todd Mitchell, an Black man who attacked a white boy because of his race. Mitchell was convicted of aggravated battery, and his sentence was increased (similarly to how the HCPA’s sentencing schedule operates) because Wisconsin courts found that he had selected his victim based on protected status. Mitchell argued that Wisconsin was, unconstitutionally, punishing him for his beliefs.

The Supreme Court of the United States unanimously held that Wisconsin’s law was constitutional. Writing the Court’s opinion, Chief Justice Rehnquist discusses many of the same questions we are considering today.

Rehnquist writes that ample precedent supports the consideration of motives in sentencing criminals.

Traditionally, sentencing judges have considered a wide variety of factors in addition to evidence bearing on guilt in determining what sentence to impose on a convicted defendant... The defendant's motive for committing the offense is one important factor. See 1 W. LeFave & A. Scott, Substantive Criminal Law § 3.6(b), p. 324 (1986) ("Motives are most relevant when the trial judge sets the defendant's sentence, and it is not uncommon for a defendant to receive a minimum sentence because he was acting with good motives, or a rather high sentence because of his bad motives"); cf. Tison v. Arizona, 481 U. S. 137, 156 (1987) ("Deeply ingrained in our legal tradition is the idea that the more purposeful is the criminal conduct, the more serious is the offense, and, therefore, the more severely it ought to be punished"). Thus, in many States the commission of a murder, or other capital offense, for pecuniary gain is a separate aggravating circumstance under the capital sentencing statute.

This is the core of the constitutional rationale for the HCPA: motives for crimes are part of the criminal process, and well within Congress’s authority to act on. Petitioner’s sentence is not being “extended due to his repugnant personal views.” His sentence has been extended because he attacked two gay men because they were gay.

To put this another way, let’s consider terrorism. If you blow up a bomb in a parking lot with the intention of killing your spouse, you can be prosecuted for an entirely different crime and receive an entirely different sentence than if you blew up the same bomb in the same parking lot with the intention of overthrowing the government. This is because Congress has decided that crimes “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion” are worse than the same crimes with different and non-political motives. Would we be punishing the Boston Bomber for his beliefs if we charged him with terrorism instead of just generic bomb-blowing-uppery?

We do not think so, and we think the same logic applies here: Congress decided when it passed the HCPA that conduct is worse if it’s motivated by some things than if it’s motivated by other things. That’s well within its authority.

Rehnquist goes on to note that, as the Court decided in Dawson v. Delaware, “abstract beliefs” are distinct from motives and cannot be punished. However, he distinguishes this from Barclay v. Florida, concerning the death sentence a defendant received in part based on evidence that he committed his crime with the intention of starting a race war.

Think of this as the distinction between Mitchell hating white people and beating up a white child, and Mitchell beating up the child because the child is white. Enhancing Mitchell’s sentence in the former case, as decided in Dawson, would be unconstitutional. Enhancing it in the latter case, as decided in Barclay, is not. Just as in the latter case, the HCPA punishes conduct and considers motives for conduct in deciding a sentence.

Rehnquist then notes that federal antidiscrimination laws, like the Civil Rights Act, rely on similar presumptions of motive.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for example, makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against an employee "because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-2(a)(1) (emphasis added). In Hishon, we rejected the argument that Title VII infringed employers' First Amendment rights. And more recently, in R. A. v: v. St. Paul, 505 U. S., at 389-390, we cited Title VII (as well as 18 U. S. C. § 242 and 42 U. S. C. §§ 1981 and 1982) as an example of a permissible content-neutral regulation of conduct.

To bend this a little bit: under the provisions of the Act concerning public accommodations, Atlasia bans restaurants from kicking people out based on race. That is constitutional. Few but the most hardcore libertarians would dispute that. It doesn’t ban people from being racist, or punish people for being racist. It punishes people for taking actions against other people with provable bigoted motives.

III. EQUAL PROTECTION

Petitioner argues that the HCPA violates the right to equal protection under the law, but this does not hold up to scrutiny. All Atlasians are protected equally under the HCPA. They’re all protected from crimes committed against them because they belong to a class of citizens, and just like they would all be punished more severely for manifold other motives, they’ll all be punished more severely if they victimize someone based on a class that person belongs to.

Petitioner’s “billionaire protection” hypothetical has a key flaw: just like the CRA doesn’t exclusively protect Black people, the HCPA doesn’t exclusively protect any defined groups. Insofar as it creates “protected classes,” it protects all citizens from being victimized based on any class they belong to. No group is privileged over any other. It should not escape the Court that Mr. Mitchell was a Black man, and his victim was white.

A more accurate analogy for what the HCPA does would be a law punishing crimes motivated by socioeconomic status — not just anti-rich, but anti-poor and anti-middle class as well. It is our contention that such a law, policy merits aside, would be perfectly constitutional.

IV. STARE DECISIS AND THE LEGISLATIVE RESET

We find ourselves in an interesting situation here with regard to precedent. As the petitioner has noted, Snowstalker v. The Midwest is a pre-reset case which affirms his position that hate crime sentencing schedules are unconstitutional. However, it is a stretch to refer to any pre-reset decision as a “precedent-setting case.” The Constitution under which Snowstalker was decided is gone. Whatever language overlaps exist between the pre-and-post-reset Constitutions are irrelevant: in 2016, new framers adopted a new constitution with their own intentions.

Discerning these intentions may at first seem difficult, but in reality it is quite simple. The framers of the current Constitution copied the American Constitution’s Bill of Rights into their constitution, nearly verbatim. As Justice Bacon King noted in Politics Fan v. The South, concerning abortion rights precedent being ported in from IRL, “this direct transfer of such precise language indicates a clear desire to apply contemporary American Bill of Rights jurisprudence upon Atlasia as they would have understood it.”

This, unlike Snowstalker, is post-reset precedent, and it makes things pretty clear. The Court has ruled that American jurisprudence on the Bill of Rights is binding in Atlasia. That includes Mitchell. Consequently, when considering stare decisis, Mitchell is relevant precedent. Snowstalker is not.

V. CONCLUSION

The state thanks the Court for their accommodation throughout this process, and stands ready to answer any questions the Justices may have.

The state also asks the Court’s forgiveness for any typos that may have arisen from writing this brief at 3:12 AM on an iPhone.

[windjammer]

Thank you Tedbessel for this brief. I will obviously let oakvale answer to this.

[Oakvale]

Thank you Mr. Chief Justice. If it pleases the Court, I will - very briefly - respond to one or two of the defense's points on Friday evening. this weekend (I have been otherwise occupied. Apologies).

[Mike Thick]

Thank you Mr. Chief Justice. If it pleases the Court, I will - very briefly - respond to one or two of the defense's points on Friday evening. this weekend (I have been otherwise occupied. Apologies).

The state has no objection to this extension.

[Oakvale]

Justices of the Supreme Court -

I wish to respond to defense's interpretation of precedent in Atlasian constitutional law. The state's argument rests upon

1. the application of US judicial precedent to the Constitution of Atlasia

2. the rejection of petitioner's proposed application of Atlasian judicial precedent to the Constitution of Atlasia.

The state's defense rests entirely upon the interpretation of US judicial precedent to the - similar, but not identical - equivalent langauge in our Constitution. As I have outlined previously, in Snowstalker... the Court has established a precedent in Atlasian jurisprudence.

The question therefore is which precedent - if you will - takes precedence.

I have no objection, in principle, to the application of American precedent where such exists. The Court has cited U.S. rulings - where equivalent Atlasian rulings do not exist - in many previous cases. I am therefore not, inherently, opposed to defense's citation of Wisconsin v. Mitchell. But I submit that it is self-evident that, where a conflict of precedent exists, Atlasian precedent should be prioritized over American precedent.

Defense argues:

We find ourselves in an interesting situation here with regard to precedent. As the petitioner has noted, Snowstalker v. The Midwest is a pre-reset case which affirms his position that hate crime sentencing schedules are unconstitutional. However, it is a stretch to refer to any pre-reset decision as a “precedent-setting case.” The Constitution under which Snowstalker was decided is gone. Whatever language overlaps exist between the pre-and-post-reset Constitutions are irrelevant: in 2016, new framers adopted a new constitution with their own intentions.

This argument is confusing to me. It is true that Snowstalker is pre-"reset" case. To which I can only ask: so? The previous Constitution is, it's true, gone, but the relevant text is identical to that in the present iteration of the Constitution. The functional equivalent of there being a new Constitution, as it relates to this text, is as if there were simply a series of substantial amendments made to other articles, leaving the text in question unchanged. The fact that this is nominally a 'new Constitution' is thus irrelevant.

Defense proposes that the Court tosses aside over a decade of Supreme Court precedent because irrelevant parts of the Constitution have been altered. Are we to assume that future Court rulings must rely on only those cases decided in the last few years for guidance, even where the text is both literally and functionally identical?

Defense further notes that the "intention of the founders" may have been different in the most recent Constitution. This radically conservative argument similarly perplexes. "The intention of the founders" has never been a principle upon which Atlasian legal theory has been built, for the simple fact that, unlike in America, our "founders" are, in the main, still around. If the Court is to decide cases based on "intention", defense's logic would suggest that all Constitutional questions should be settled by simply PMing the posters responsible and asking them.

What then, would the point of the Court be?

Discerning these intentions may at first seem difficult, but in reality it is quite simple. The framers of the current Constitution copied the American Constitution’s Bill of Rights into their constitution, nearly verbatim. As Justice Bacon King noted in Politics Fan v. The South, concerning abortion rights precedent being ported in from IRL, “this direct transfer of such precise language indicates a clear desire to apply contemporary American Bill of Rights jurisprudence upon Atlasia as they would have understood it.”

This is, in its most literal sense, true, but has been effectively true for virtually every iteration of Atlasian Constitutions in our history. The U.S. Supreme Court does not set precedent in Atlasia. It can guide and inform the decisions of the Court, but - particularly when a directly applicable case in our own nation exists - must, surely, to maintain the fundamental integrity of the game, take a back seat to the decisions of our own Court and our own people.

Of course, the breadth and volume of American jurisprudence dramatically outweighs that of its Atlasian equivalent. It is therefore understandable that, where circumstances dictate, the Court may deign to examine similar cases under the American model. But if we are to take this argument to its inevitable conclusion, there would never again be a case decided under Atlasian constitutional principles, guided by long established Atlasian constitutional legal precedent.

To accept this would be to effectively state that a Supreme Court decision will never again be binding. The slate will be wiped clean each time the Court issues a ruling, because each time there will, inevitably, be such a volume of precedent from another country that a decade of Atlasian legal history would be confined to irrelevance.

Precedent is important. Defense clearly agrees. I have argued that there is clear Atlasian principle established in Snowstalker, based on Constitutional language that remains unchanged, that it would behoove the Court to adhere to. But, regardless of the ultimate decision in this matter, I would urge the Court to reject defense's extraordinary suggestion that Atlasian precedent can be discarded on a whim.

I thank the Court.

[windjammer]

Thank you for your time oakvale.


I must announce that I will be recusing myself from this case. I wasn't expecting to do that at all regarding hate crime laws (as obviously I have no conflict of interest with that). However, the fundamental question that the supreme court is going to answer with this court case is whether Snowstalker vs the midwest must continue to be considered as a precedent or not. And I was the main defendant of the region for this case, and so there would be a conflict of interest.

I'm sure my esteemed colleagues will make as always the wisest decision.

[Mike Thick]

If it pleases the court, the state would like to briefly respond to the petitioner's response.

As the Chief Justice says, the outcome of this case will largely hinge on whether Snowstalker or Mitchell is more relevant precedent. Petitioner argues that pre-reset jurisprudence is operative when the relevant constitutional language is identical.

The state again refers to Politics Fan v. The South. The case, as noted earlier, concerned the constitutionality of a regional law restricting abortion. Respondents cited Roe v. ZuWo as controlling precedent. In ZuWo, the Court held the legality of abortion to be a political question outside the remit of the courts, and that the regions had legislative authority to regulate abortion:

[The Court] must pause to point out in no uncertain terms that such a debate is a political question outside the scope of this case and that this matter concerns the powers of the Senate on this issue, not the legality of the medical procedure of abortion per se.

...

It seems to evident to us that, if abortion is to be legal in Atlasia, and as mentioned in the analysis of the 'implicit definition of life' argument presented by the Attorney General, such a discussion is outside the remit of this particular case, then the regions, and the regions alone, must possess the constitutional power to legislate on this procedure.

The respondents in Politics Fan argued that this precedent protected the South's power to restrict abortion. Furthermore, while these respondents did not explicitly say as much, a ruling that abortion law is a "political question" would certainly preclude the Court from establishing a constitutional right to abortion. Based on the arguments made by both sides, as well as questions from the Justices, it appears that the Court did consider the issue of precedent in issuing their ruling.

In Politics Fan, the Court ruled that such a right does exist. The state would like to draw the Court's attention to one paragraph in Section II of the ruling, which we cited in part in our initial brief but will cite in full now (emphasis mine).

In addition to covering personal privacy, this right also has some extension that covers marriage, procreation, contraception, as well as family planning; this is evident in cases such as Loving v. Virginia and Griswold v. Connecticut, both of which were decided within the common law jurisdiction of the United States based upon Constitutional language in their Bill of Rights that is verbatim identical to our own Article I. 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.

This is clear as day. Rather than find ZuWo to be controlling precedent, allowing the South's abortion law to stand, the Court affirmed a constitutional right to abortion based on "contemporary American Bill of Rights jurisprudence." Indeed, the Court did not even cite ZuWo as providing "guidance" in the same way as American jurisprudence does.

Perhaps it was an overstatement by the state to suggest that Mitchell constitutes binding precedent. However, it provides the guidance that the Court must look to in the absence of binding precedent. If pre-reset cases provided this precedent, Politics Fan would have been decided differently.

Petitioner argues that considering the intentions of the Fourth Constitution's framers is a "radically conservative argument" and claims that it undermines the foundation of judicial authority in Atlasia. Far from it, this principle was used by the Court as justification for the most significant abortion case in post-reset history.

The framers were obviously familiar with United States Bill of Rights and the inferred right to privacy contained therein. They were not merely inspired by the Bill of Rights, they deliberately copied its Amendments verbatim for inclusion within Article I of our own Constitution. This direct transfer of such precise language indicates a clear desire to apply contemporary American Bill of Rights jurisprudence upon Atlasia as they would have understood it – which includes a right to privacy.

No Supreme Court decision since the Fourth Constitution was adopted -- not a single one -- has cited a case from before the reset. By contrast, in Politics Fan, the Court rejected the notion that pre-reset cases bind us today.

The Court can and has looked to rulings by the American Supreme Court for guidance. That, if you will, is the precedent that takes precedent.