Lincoln Confirmation Hearing: KaiserDave to be Associate Justice - Withdrawn

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I hereby nominate Kaiserdave to the office of associate justice for Lincoln

x tack50

The nominee is invited to make an opening statement and then we will have time for questions.

[KaiserDave]

Hello all. I believe my service as Governor of Lincoln for over a year, as well as my strong pattern of activity on the site qualify me to take up this esteemed office. I post frequently, I am capable of writing and contributing to decisions, I possess the requisite knowledge for this position and I look forward to learning from the existing judges. I thank the Governor for nominating me and the General Court which I helped found for considering my nomination.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

All right, some questions.

1. You've expressed your respect for the general court in this process, but on two previous occasions, when you wanted Lincoln to secede in a violent fashion and when you wanted the Kansas Crisis to either radically change or destroy the game, you attempted to dissolve the body! On the secession occasion, you (or more correctly, your associate Crane) tried to dissolve the Regional Circuit Court. On both occasions, you demonstrated a general lack of respect for the Federal and Regional Constitutions and the institutions of this game when they did not serve your goals. Why should we assume that you hold the basic respect and reverence to our constitution that this job requires and will rule within its limits?

2. During the Kansas Crisis, you exploited a national emergency to give yourself unprecedented powers. These included the "power to take any measure to protect the people, as he (meaning you) deems necessary", unlimited power for "summary arrests" and "indefinite detention of foreign agents". While you didn't use these powers to their full potential, you certainly contemplated doing so: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=493520.msg8599244#msg8599244. Even after the Crisis was over, you refused to fully repeal the emergency act, leaving this body, a full three courts after the emergency act, to finally move the region forward. 

Given these actions, why should people trust you to be a fair and impartial arbiter of the law, rather than a justice focused on his own personal and/or partisan goals to the exclusion of the law?

3. During your most recent months as Lincoln Governor, you exhibited several signs of inactivity. First, your office thread remained unused by you during the entirety of June, July, and the portion of August in which you still held the role, see https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=436488.msg8625517#msg8625517 . Second, you never formally appointed a replacement for ReaganClinton after he resigned as elections secretary, seeming to indicate an intention to run elections yourself as the Constitution allows, but then simply took advantage of the fact that I ended up returning to the Speakership and left me to run the last two elections held by the region. Third, you declined to take any action on nearly all of the bills that passed the 7th and 8th Courts. While we thankfully do have inaction clauses, they aren't supposed to be the regular order of business.

Given these developments, Why should you be trusted to be an active member of the judiciary?

[KaiserDave]

My overall response to all of this is as follows

1. I am active on Atlas, this is a fact. Sorry Wulfric that I don't spend as much time on this board as you do. Not gonna change that.
2. I have no interest in any more illegal chicanery, no time nor effort! Everything I did before was largely sanctioned by this body anyway. No measures were ever moved against me, I didn't even have to veto any bills about that, and the Court agreed to the Emergency Act adjustment I proposed. Sorry you didn't.

As Justice I will do nothing out of the ordinary. I do not care enough to do otherwise. I will observe the law and nothing else.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

As a note, this is a completely open floor. If other deputies have questions, feel free to bring them forth.
--
The "sanctioned by this body" argument is an exaggeration. In the case of violent secession, much of the Court at the time vehemently opposed your actions, indeed Crane was the only member of the body who really agreed with you. Only after your actions were shifted to be within the Constitution did we move forward. In the case of Kansas, LGC 6.12 had a tie vote (which you broke in favor of course) with a plurality of the Court abstaining. The amendment to LGC 7.1 passed on a measly 1-0 vote. Of course on final passage that bill was better than doing nothing, so I do not disagree with the vote to pass it at that point.


That being said, given your stated lack of interest in committing further actions, which honestly is sort of backed up with your lower activity levels of late, I will not question further on this.

---

However, your lower level of activity also presents a concern. In Lincoln these last few months, you didn't necessarily have to do your job because I'm around and because inaction clauses. But in the Supreme Court, neither exists. The court already struggles to release decisions in a timely manner. You won't be able to hand things off to someone else. In the case of regional cases, you will be solely responsible for writing the opinion. Maybe you are active on Atlas as a whole, but what is important to this job is in-game activity. Given your recent lack of nearly any such activity, Why should we believe you actually have interest in the job and won't just use the security of a lifetime appointment to give you a reason to neglect the position?

[Joseph Cao]

I don’t think any Supreme Court Justice in recent memory has spent as much time on AFE/AFG as Wulfric, lol. Strange metric to use.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I don’t think any Supreme Court Justice in recent memory has spent as much time on AFE/AFG as Wulfric, lol. Strange metric to use.

I guess I should note that I'm not expecting anyone to match me. I just don't want us to appoint someone to a lifetime role if they're just going to expect someone else to do everything in the role.

[Continential]

no comment

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I'm not going to engage in Garland style tactics like say, trying to table the Nomination or locking the thread.

That being said, I will be opposing the Nomination when I bring it to a vote.

[Former President tack50]

Well, I will make the following confession: I nominated KaiserDave because to me it was one of very few options that I thought could be ok and that was offered to me.

If anyone else in the Court wants to make an alternative suggestion for SC pick, I am all ears and I will consider them on their merits. However for now, it seems to me like it's KD or bust sadly (the other options offered to me I felt would be incredibly inactive, while I definitely do trust Dave on activity)

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I've privately provided several names to the Governor. I believe the talent in our region is vast and there is no reason to settle for a subpar nominee, particularly given this is a lifetime appointment.

[GregTheGreat657]

I personally suggest that the Governor nominates Poirot

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

By order of the Governor, the Nomination is withdrawn