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Note: this document is under construction! See the introduction.
It is not even a finished draft yet, just parts of a draft interspered with notes.
Capitalized words are those which have a special meaning. Definitions of these words, and others, may be found in the glossary.
This document defines, limits, and structures the State
The Legislature makes the laws and sets policy. The Legislature is composed of three houses, which are the House of the People, the Senate, and the Board of Foreign Affairs. The House of the People uses direct democracy; the Senate and the Board of Foreign Affairs are small bodies composed of indirect representatives.
The Government, which is administered by the Prime Minister, carries out the laws, with the exception of military and foreign policy, which is carried out by the Foreign Minister. The Prime Minister is appointed by the Senate, and the Foreign Minister by the Board of Foreign Affairs.
The Courts interpret the laws.
The Tribunes investigate, with the aim of checking and restraining both the State as a whole, and also powerful elements within the State.
The section Rights and Principals sets fundamental limits on the power of the State.
These are accorded to all people, citizens and non-citizens1.
Basic rights are always negative rights, meaning that they could be fulfilled without placing any obligation upon any private individual, except for an obligation NOT to do certain things. However, it is the primary function of government to protect the basic rights of citizens.
todo: some of these rights concern fair process, are they negative rights? are they basic rights? must basic rights be able to be fulfilled in the absence of the existence of any government?
(todo: finish looking at other lists of rights and pick the ones i agree with)
todo: check out
US Bill of Rights (again) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Declaration_of_Rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights UN declaration of rights the rights that were to go into the EU constitution magna carta (again) petition of rights, etc magnacartaplus site various constititutions german civil code french civil code
Items not on these lists are outside the government's power. Nothing on these lists shall empower the government to violate the basic rights of any person or the civil rights of citizens. The government may only use these powers when directed to do so by the Legislature using the procedures described in this Constitution, and may only use them as the Legislature directs.
These powers may be delegated but only to franchise governments.
These powers may be exercised by anyone except as restricted by statue24.
In descending order of priority.
More principals may be found in the Details section.
The State consists of the following entities:
All sovereign power rests in the electorate. The electorate is the head of the state.
The House of the People is one of the two chambers of Legislature. The House of the People is a direct democracy process.
Each Member of the Electorate gets one Vote on each issue. On any particular issue, or set of issues, a Member may choose to assign their Vote to any other Member or Members of the Electorate, as a Proxy Vote. A Member may also pass on any Proxy Votes that they have received to other Members.
The Senate is one of the two chambers of Legislature. The Senate is a small representative body chosen by general election. The election uses a recursive representation scheme (todo: define).
The Senate appoints the Prime Minister. At any time, the Senate may replace the Prime Minister.
The Senate may dismiss any member of the Cabinet.
The Senate may dissolve itself.
The Board of Foreign Affairs is like the Senate, except that it considers only foreign policy, and except that it is smaller.
When one chamber passes a Bill, the other chamber has three months to Veto it. If there is no Veto, the Bill becomes law.
However, any bill which requires at least a 2/3 voting threshold must be passed affirmatively by both chambers before becoming law.
Neither chamber may pass more than 10 pages of Bills per day. Unused page quota may be "saved up" up to a limit of 1000 pages.
If a chamber exceeds its word limit, and attempts to pass further bills that day, such bills are not considered to have passed, regardless of the views and records of that chamber.
The Legislature may pardon or commute the sentence of any entity for any crime.
todo: should be word limit
The Legislature is the supreme authority of the government, and has the power to overrule the Prime Minister or the Foreign Minister on any decision, or to directly issue any order that they can issue.
The voting threshold for bills in both houses is 60%, except as specified below29 30.
The voting threshold for bills which do one of more of the following is 2/331:
The voting threshold for bills which repeal laws and which do not do any of the of the above is 50%32.
The voting threshold for bills solely composed of provisions which do not do any of the above, and which each do one or more of the following, is 50%33:
The voting threshold for amendments to this Constitution is 75%34.
A Renewable bill may be Renewed with a 50% threshold35.
The voting threshold for a Bill to Appoint a Supreme Court Judge is 2/3.
The voting threshold for a Pardon is 2/3.
The voting threshold to veto the other chamber is 50%.
The Prime Minister is the head of government. The Prime Minister is appointed by the Senate.
The Prime Minister may dissolve the Senate.
The Prime Minister appoints and may dismiss members of the Cabinet.
The Foreign Minister is the head of foreign affairs. The Foreign Minister is appointed by the Board of Foreign Affairs.
The Foreign Minister may dissolve the Board of Foreign Affairs.
The Foreign Minister appoints and may dismiss members of the Foreign Cabinet.
A new Tribune is elected at the same times as the Senate has elections.
The Tribune's duty is to preemptively watch for, investigate, publicize, and prosecute undesirable, corrupt, or illegal behavior in the functioning of the State36
The tribune can compel any part of the State to release any information to hir. There is no type of information which is off-limits to the Tribune. The Tribune may make public any information to which s/he has access. The Tribune has the standing to prosecute anyone for any offence relating to undesirable, corrupt, or illegal behavior in the functioning of the State, or dereliction of duty of an official in the functioning of the State.
When a Tribune compels information from the government, the information must be supplied along with a signed oath that it is the truth. Lying under oath to a Tribune or hir agent is a felony.
A majority of the Tribunes can pardon anyone of any crime, or commute their sentence.
The Supreme Court consists of 7 Judges each appointed for 15 year terms. They cannot be reappointed. No person who has been a Supreme Court Judges can serve as any official or government employee.
New Supreme Court Judges are appointed by a Bill to Appoint a Supreme Court Judge.
When vacancies appear, then if necessary to produce an odd number of Judges, the most senior judge on the Supreme Court steps aside temporarily.
Supreme Court Judges cannot be removed without reason, but can be removed if both of the following happen: a) s/he (or they, if multiple Judges) are convicted of a felony (s/he or they cannot preside over hir or their own case), or determined by the courts to be mentally incompetent for medical reasons b) a Bill of Removal is passed by the Legislature with a 2/3 vote
The duty of the Supreme Court is threefold:
1) Interpret the law 2) Guard the people against the government' 3) Guard individuals against the majority
When prompted by a case, the Supreme Court may force the Legislature to make a clarification to the law. To do this, they describe the ambiguity, and present a small number of possible fixes. This power may be used at most 10 times per year37.
When they do this, the House of the People is compelled to add the issue to their agenda as if this issue had met whatever criteria are necessary to place an item on the agenda for discussion on the main floor followed by a vote. In addition, the item must be added to the agenda so that discussion may reasonable be expected to be completed within 6 months. Except for this, the item is treated normally within the House, with each "possible fix" presented as a bill. The House is not constrained to choose one of the alternatives provided by the Supreme Court.
If six months or more have elapsed and House has not passed a resolution on the issue, and the Senate passes a resolution on the issue which chooses one of the alternatives provided by the Supreme Court, then this immediately becomes law. This not does constrain the House from debating the issue or passing resolutions to change this law.
The Supreme Court may Force Clarification in cases which, in its judgement, meet one of the following criteria:
(todo: intro?)
The commander-in-chief of the military is normally the Minister of Foreign Affairs. However, the Legislature is the supreme authority in military matters, and may directly issue orders, organize the military, etc, over the objections and without the involvement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.\footnote{The Legislature therefore holds the position designated as "commander-in-chief" in some countries. The point is that, basically, the Minister of Foreign Affairs is the C-in-C, except that I don't want a situation like in the U.S.A. to occur, where some factions hold that the legislature has no authority to override the President in military matters, because he is "commander-in-chief".}
During Martial Law, the Prime Minister is the commander-in-chief.
The Legislature may not appropriate or promise to appropriate funding for the military more than two years in advance.
Any military officer who was at the top of the military chain of command shall henceforth be barred from life as serving as a High Official outside the military.
"At the top of the chain of command" means that they did not have any immediate superior who was a military official, or that their immediate superior was either the Foreign Minister or the Prime Minister. In the case that a group of military officers had each other as immediate superiors, so that no "top" of the chain of command can be found using the criteria just given, then all of them are considered to be at the "top of the chain of command".
Provinces are autonomous governments with control over geographical territories.
A pair of provinchial governments may by mutual agreement reallocate territory between them. Provinces may choose to split themselves. Provinces may merge by mutual consent.
The Legislature, by a 2/3 vote, may reallocate territories between the provinchial governments, with the consent of 2/3 of citizens in the territory being reallocated.
(todo: see requirements on regional shape elsewhere)
(todo: merge this section with the franchise government section)
Provinces have a right to maintain standing militias\footnote{Some people believe that the stability of the U.S. system is partly due to its federal structure. So I'd like to preserve that, while getting rid of the gerrymandering that takes place when you allow the provinchial governments to actually have an equal vote in some part of the legislature.}.
These militias may possess any sort of weapons and do any sort of exercises that the national military may possess or do. However, the Law may limit what sort of weapons may be acquired, how they may be used, and what sort of safeguards, both physical and procedural, must be adhered to regarding weapons, provided that these laws apply to the national military to the same degree as the provinchial militias, and provided that all decision-making, authorization, and certification for the militias is in the hands of the provinchial government, not the national government.
The autonomy of provinces and their right to maintain militias are not delegated rights stemming from the central State.
Provinchial governments must be democracies controlled by the citizens over which they are given power, and this control must be divided between those citizens in a fair and universal way. Provinchial governments must not infringe the basic rights of any person, or the civil rights of citizens.
Provinchial governments do not participate in the legislative process.
Each area of territory must be part of a province. There shall be at least 12 provinces39>
Any area may secede from its province, thereby forming a new province, by the same procedure for seceding from the State (outlined in the section "secession"). Secession from a province is a separate question from secession from the State.
No agency may be both domestic and foreign at the same time. No single person may be employed by both a domestic and a foreign agency except as explicitly specified in the law 47.
This is already implied by the above, however, since in the United States the practice of "civil forfeiture" has been implemented in which property is taken without a standard or jury trial with the justification that "it's the property, not the person, being prosecuted" -- we here say explicitly that the usual standards of a fair trial are required to take property from a person, just they would be required to convict that person.
Information is not considered to be "public" if it has been disclosed to a third-party. Public information is defined to be information that any citizen can cheaply, conveniently, openly, and legally access, collect, analyze, and publish, and which is widely known to be so available. Information which is not public is private and may not be accessed, collected, or analyzed by the government without a specific warrent, for which they must show probable cause.
For instance, with regards to the conditions in 2007, government cannot snoop on an individual's car-rental records without a warrant, because this is like searching hir home. Similarly, the government cannot take videos of public roadways and in this case trace people's movements, because private citizens would be prohibited from doing so. In the future, these conditions may change; for example, if it becomes cheap, convenient, and legal for any citizen to obtain information from networks of roadside surveillance networks, to analyze this to trace other individual's movements, and to publish the results, then the government may then do the same without a warrant.
Note that automated analyses by the government still require a warrant if they use private information, even if no human sees this information. Even filtering innocent information to pick out information for which the government has a warrant is prohibited; this filtering must be done by the possessors of the information before the government touches the information stream (this is to remove the temptation for the government to surripticiously take some of the information which they aren't supposed to, which they could do without anyone noticing if they control the equipment that filters it).
The number of members of the Senate is ln(number of members of the electorate).
The Senate may dismiss Cabinet members at any time for any reason.
The Senate may dissolve itself at any time.
Each Senator has one vote, and all Senators have equal powers.
Upon the passage of a bill in one chamber of the Legislature, that bill shall be considered to be vetoed by the other chamber unless the other chamber has reached quorum at least twice during the three-month veto period. If a bill is vetoed in this way, nothing shall prevent the original chamber from sending it back to the other chamber the next time that the other chamber meets\footnote{This is to prevent the situation where an attack on the Senate or a major accident which prevents it from meeting provides an excuse for the House to pass bills without Senate review. Note however that as a side effect, it allows a minority of Senators to veto a bill by preventing quorum. Even if the Senate never again met, the House could still send the bill to a referendum, however, so this would only be a good idea if a majority of the people supported that minority of Senators; if the Senate did eventually meet, the House could simply re-send the bill then. It also prevents the same situation with the roles of the House and the Senate switched. Notice that this means that "quorum" must somehow be defined for the House.}.
All issues except issues of foreign policy or external relations are handled by the Senate and the Prime Minister. Issues of foreign policy or external relations are handled by the Foreign Minister.
Constitutional questions are always handled by the Senate, not the Board of Foreign Affairs. Issues surrounding the question of what is and is not, "foreign policy" or "external relations" are handled by the Senate, not the Board of Foreign Affairs.
The size of the Board of Foreign Affairs is ceil(sqrt(size of the Senate)).
The method of election of the Board of Foreign Affairs is the same as for the Senate.
The Board may dissolve itself at any time.
Upon the passage of a Bill in either chamber of the Legislature, the other chamber has three months to decide whether it wants to Veto the Bill. The other chamber can also affirmatively Assent to the Bill, in which case it becomes law immediately (without waiting for the rest of the three months).
If the other chamber does not act, the Bill automatically becomes Law at the end of that period.
Upon Vetoing a Bill a chamber may also choose to do none, one, or more than one of the following things:
If the Senate vetos a bill and does not Delay or Refer it, the House may, by a majority vote, put it to a referendum, in which case it will require the same vote threshold that it required in the Legislature.
All bills dealing with budgets for permanent government offices, or the paying of salaries of government employees, or the satisfaction of continuing financial obligations of the government, must be Renewable49.
A bill for the government to borrow money or otherwise to make a financial committment is considered an increase in spending.
A bill for the government to increase the money supply is considered an increase in spending.
The Legislature may not declare anyone to be guilty of any crime, or impose criminal punishment.
If the Senate vetos an Amendment to this Constitution, the House may, by a 60% vote, send the issue to a referendum. If 2/3 of the voters vote for the amendment, it passes.
Exceptions may be made to the daily word limit as follows. The bill is passed with a note indicating that is does not have any effect unless a Word Limit Exception takes effect. Such a bill must be passed with a vote threshold of 5% less than the threshold to Amend this Constitution.
If the other chamber passes an identical bill within three months, also with a vote threshold of 5% less than the threshold to Amend this Constitution, then a Word Limit Exception takes effect.
In the case of a Word Limit Exception, that bill becomes law despite the word limit, and the word limit count is not affected by that bill.
Any provision of this Constitution may be waived with respect to a single bill if both houses pass the identical bill with a vote threshold of 5% less than the threshold to Amend this Constitution50.
The Prime Minister may not dissolve the Senate in the first six months after a Senate election.
The Prime Minister may dismiss any member of the Cabinet at any time for any reason.
After a Senate election, the Senate holds an election for the Prime Minister51. Any three members of the Senate may together nominate a candidate for Prime Minister. Each member may sign only one nomination. The election is counted by a Condorcet method. The previous Prime Minister continues to serve until the new Prime Minister is sworn in. In the event that there is no single Condorcet winner in a Senate election, the House decides among the winning candidates using a Condorcet method with tiebreaking.
At any time, the Prime Minister may resign. In this case, an election is held just as after a Senate election.
At any time, for any reason, a simple majority of the Senate may vote to recall the Prime Minister. In this case, a replacement election is held. Candidates are nominated as above. The current Prime Minister is automatically a candidate. The recall vote has no effect except to precipitate the replacement election. If there is a Condorcet winner, that candidate wins. If there is no Condorcet winner, and the current Prime Minister is among the winners, then the current Prime Minister wins52. If there is no Condorcet winner and the current Prime Minister is not among the winners, then the House decides among the winning candidates using a Condorcet method with tiebreaking.
The Tribune has free reign to publicize any information that s/he has access to, but is not permitted to __selectively__ publicize information. If the Tribune gives any information to someone outside the Bureau Of The Tribune who is not normally allowed to access that information, the Tribune must first make the information publically available and announce its availability. The Tribune must continue to make that information available from that point forward (at the expense of the government).
If the Tribune does selectively release information, they are then acting in their capacity as a private citizen rather than in the role of Tribune, and they are liable to the same degree that another private citizen would be liable for that release.
The Tribune is supposed to protect the integrity of the State; however, ordinary crime within the Electorate is the concern of the police, and not the concern of the Tribune, even thought the Electorate is the Head of the State.
Even during emergency conditions, the freedom of speech or of movement of Tribunes may not be in any way abridged, and no citizen may be prevented from communicating with a Tribune without the consent of that Tribune.
Tribunes may be impeached for any reason by a 2/3 vote of the Legislature. At this point, a referendum is held, and a 2/3 popular vote is needed to remove them.
The Legislature may issue a Declaration of War.
No person is permitted to use or to authorize military force without a Declaration of War, except according to the three exceptions below.
One, the Foreign Minister may authorize the use of military force for purely defensive purposes against an unexpected attack for a length of time not exceeding one month, while the Legislature deliberates upon a Declaration of War. The Legislature may remove this authorization at will, even preventatively.
Two, the Prime Minister may authorize the use of force, in accordance with the Constitution as in effect at that time, during a Condition of Martial Law.
Three, the military is always authorized to retreat and to cover their retreat with an absolute minimum amount of force necessary to preserve the safety of their personnel, or to prevent military equipment from falling into the hands of the enemy53.
An attack is considered unexpected if a reasonable person with the same access to information as the Foreign Minister would have thought that such an attack was very unlikely a month prior to the attack54.
Any attempt to use or to authorize military force in violation of this section is a felony and in addition constitutes a resignation from any official position by the individual making the attempt, effective at the time that the attempt is made.
A Declaration of War does not in any way permit the suspension or abridgement of normal rights and procedures; this would require a Condition of Dire War.
A Declaration of War must specify a specific enemy. Wars must be declared against specific people or organizations, never against other abstract entities or phenomena55.
A Declaration of War must specify a time limit; at this time, the Declaration automatically expires unless renewed by the Legislature. A Declaration of War may be renewed by the Legislature an arbitrarily large number of times. The time limit may not be longer than 5 years.
The Legislature may cancel a Declaration of War at will56.
High officials include the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, members of the Cabinet, the Senate, the Board of Foreign Relations, the Supreme Court, and the Censors. Other officials may be deemed high officials by statue.
No high offical may give or accept or lend or borrow any money or gifts or exchange goods or services or have any business relationships with anyone during their term of office.
The financial needs of high officials must be provided for entirely by the government during their term of office. High officials must be completely divested of any business ownership or financial holdings during their term of office.
An exception is made for a total amount of one twentieth of the salary of the offical per year.
Furthermore, an exception is made in that the officials may buy a basic level of consumer goods and services through normal channels for the same price as available to the typical person.
Furthermore, an exception is made in that the officials may visit or reside for free at any residence.
Transactions pursuant to these exceptions must be made public.
A high official may resign at will at any time, at which time these restrictions immediately cease.
No person may simultaineously more than one of the following:
In all Emergency Conditions, the Government may exercise its additional powers only as clearly and directly needed to respond to the particular threat.
This Condition (which is not an Emergency Condition; rather, it is the opposite) obtains when there is no Condition of Temporary Emergency, Condition of Dire War, or Condition of Martial Law.
The Prime Minister, or either house of the Legislature, or a majority of the Tribunes may at any time cancel any Emergency Condition57.
In addition, the individuals who were at the time of the declaration of the Emergency Condition serving as Senators or as Tribunes may, by a majority of those who were Senators or a majority of those who were Tribunes, cancel that Emergency Condition58. If these individuals are unreachable, these majorities shall be calculated out of the reachable members59. Similarity, the individual who was at the time of the declaration of the Emergency Condition serving as Prime Minister may cancel the Emergency unilaterally. Similarly, the individuals who composed the Electorate at the time of the declaration of Emergency may cancel the Emergency by an Act generated according to the normal procedure of the House of the People as of the time of the declaration.
Some threatening, unexpected situations may require fast action by the government with less constraints than usual. Therefore, the Prime Minister may unilaterally declare a Condition of Emergency.
Although some of normal procedure and rights may be suspended during an Emergency, these changes are not decided unilaterally by government officials, but are specified by statutory law.
A Condition of Emergency automatically expires in two weeks unless renewed by the Legislature.
If the full Legislature is unable to be reached, a partial Legislature may function as the Legislature for the duration of the Condition of Emergency.
A Condition of Emergency may not last longer than two months.
Some conflicts may be so threatening to the lives of the citizens so as to require an extended suspension of normal domestic procedure. In such a situation the Legislature, with the consent of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister and a majority of the Tribunes, may declare a Condition of Dire War.
A Condition of Dire War may only be declared with respect to a specific, prior Declaration of War.
Although some of normal procedure and rights may be suspended during Dire War, these changes are not decided unilaterally by government officials, but are specified by statutory law.
This condition automatically expires unless renewed annually by the Legislature, with the consent of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister and a majority of the Tribunes.
No Condition of Dire War lasts longer than 8 years.
The Prime Minister and a majority of the Tribunes may impose a Condition of Martial Law when extremely dire conditions require it. The principal feature of Martial Law is that temporary legislative power is given to the Prime Minister.
A Condition of Martial Law is a very serious thing and those invoking it should only do so when they are each individually convinced that there is no other recourse. When possible, a Condition of Emergency or a Condition of Dire War are preferable, as neither of these give the Prime Minister unilateral legislative power. As the other conditions already permit the Legislature to temporarily suspend normal procedures and rights, it may be reasonably hoped that Martial Law will never be needed.
If a majority of the Tribunes cannot be reached, the Prime Minister may unilaterally declare martial law, but only until a majority of the Tribunes become available, at which time Marital Law is automatically cancelled unless a majority of them ratify the decison.
During Martial Law, the government and military are placed under the command of the Prime Minister, who may unilaterally suspend statutory rights and laws, authorize force, and command the military to keep order domestically. The Prime Minister may not deviate from or unilaterally suspend parts of this Constitution60. However, the Legislature may pass laws providing for parts of this Constitution to be temporarily suspended during Martial Law. Such laws must be explicit and specific about which sections of this Constitution are being suspended. If these Laws are passed during an Emergency Condition, then they are of course subject to the limitations in section Limitations on Amendments during Emergency Conditions.
As noted in section Rights and Principals, Martial Law is absolutely limited to a period of 6 months. This is a fundamental right and this limitation may be not be altered or suspended even under Martial Law.
Except for a Condition of Emergency, no Emergency Condition may be renewed after its expiration time limit has been reached without at least one year of a Condition of Normalacy elapsing. If such an Emergency Condition which did not reach its time limit is renewed before this, then for the purpose of determining the new time limit, the intervening Condition of Normalacy is counted as if it were part of the Emergency Condition.
A Condition of Emergency works the same way, except that the fallow period is two months rather than one year, and except that this requirement may be waived by the Legislature, with the consent of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister and all of the Tribunes and every member of the Senate. To prevent the abuse of this provision, in the event of such a renewal the procedures for a Condition of Emergency may not in any way make changes to the decision-making structure of power structure of the State, or impede normal deliberation by the Electorate including but not limited to the rights to Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, and Freedom of Peacable Assembly.
One way that this Constitution might be attacked would be for an Amendment to be made during a Condition of Dire War, Emergency, or Martial Law; in this way, the normal procedures for the Electorate to deliberate might be bypassed61.
To protect against this, if the Constitution is amended during a Condition of Dire War, Emergency, or Martial Law, these amendments shall expire with the cancellation or expiration of such condition, and shall not be re-enacted for a period of at least one year. If they had an effect on the distribution of power (for instance, if they affected who is a Senator, who is Prime Minister, who is a Tribune, etc), this effect is reversed upon such expiration.
If the amendments are desirable, the Legislature is encouraged to re-enact them after the fallow period.
Neither this section nor the part of this Constitution which defines Emergency Conditions may ever be amended except when a Condition of Normalacy has been in effect for at least one year directly proceeding the time of such amendment.
Of course, the government may set up subdivisions, bureaus, and departments to execute its functions. But these subdivisions are wholly a part of the government and are not independent of it; they are fully under the control of the Legislature and, to the extent that the Legislature wills, the Prime Minister; and the government is fully responsible for their behavior.
The government may also delegate powers, except for those listed as powers held exclusively by the government, to autonomous entities.
The government may also delegate the powers listed as powers held exclusively by the government, except for the power to declare and conduct war, to autonomous franchise government entities, for example to municipal or regional governments, provided that these franchise governments are democracies controlled by the citizens over which they are given power, and provided that this control is divided between those citizens in a fair and universal way.
If the Legislature so wills, powers may be delegated in such a way that they are hard to retrieve (see "Tying of hands", below).
By statue, the Legislature may bind itself and reduce its future freedom of action62. Should the consequences of such restrictions in the future be found to be accidental or clearly unreasonable or clearly dangerous, the Supreme Court has the power to nullify these bounds.
The vote threshold required for the legislature to tie its hands is the greatest threshold that would be required to pass any law having an effect similar to anything which might be a consequence of the tying of hands63.
This section shall automatically be removed from this Constitution upon the fifth anniversary of the first meeting of the Legislature after the ratification of this Consitutition.
For the two years after the first meeting of the Legislature after the ratification of this Consitutition, the word limit on bills per day is infinite.
For the first five years after the first meeting of the Legislature after the ratification of this Consitutition, the courts may decide cases based on common law as well as statue, except where common law would conflict with this constitution or with any act of the Legislature.
Principals of the justice system. These have the same weight as "civil rights", but are grouped here for convenience.
At least two weeks of every year in the Senate and in the House (but not necessarily at the same time) shall be reserved on the agenda for the debate of proposed constitutional amendments. Other urgent business may interrupt these discussions, but this simply displaces the reserved time.
Any region may unilaterally secede from the State if it meets the following criteria:
The region is considered seceded immediately upon the announcement of the result of the last of the 10 annual votes.
If this section of this Constitution is amended after such a petition has been received but before the designated region has seceded, then the designated region will be considered to have seceded if either the old provisions or the new provisions allow it to.
%% todo: study http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=secession+provisions&btnG=Search, http://mises.org/journals/scholar/kreptul.pdf
The Senate is merely one component of a larger body called the Allsenate. The Allsenate is a body of indirect representation. The Allsenate has a layered, pyramidal structure whose pinnacle is the Prime Minister, and whose base is the entire Electorate. The lowest layer of the Allsenate is the Electorate itself. Members of the electorate organize into voluntary constituencies. Each of these constituences elects a representative into the next higher layer. These representatives themselves organize into voluntary constituencies, and elect a representative into the next higher layer. And so it goes. Eventually, one of these layers is called the Senate. The Senate elects a Prime Minister.
Each representative is directly responsible only to the members of the voluntary contituency that elected hir, that is, only to representatives in the layer immediately beneath hir who voted for hir.
No person may simultaineously serve as a representative in multiple layers of the Undersenate, or in the Undersenate and the Senate.
The lowest layer of the Allsenate is the Electorate. The layer of the Allsenate immediately below the Prime Minister is called the Senate. The other layers are called the Undersenate.
For any representative,
We refer to the lowest layer of the Undersenate as layer 1.
The role of the Undersenate is not over after an election. An election serves not only to select representatives, but also to pair each representative with their direct constituency.
Since their representative is only directly responsible to them, and not to their constituents, the representatives of the Undersenate are expected to pass information between their representative above, and their own constituents below. They are expected to communicate with their direct contituents, to discuss issues with their peers, and to advise, monitor, and judge the decisions of their representative.
A representative may be recalled, for any reason, by a majority vote of their direct constituency. After a successful recall, the direct constituency of the recalled representative chooses a replacement by a Condorcet method. The recalled representative is automatically a candidate in the replacement vote.
The recall itself has no effect except to precipitate the election for a replacement; the recalled candidate continues to serve unless replaced.
An election proceeds by rounds, with one round per layer of the Undersenate, and one final round for the Senate. Each round has a fixed time period. During each round, the representatives who will serve in a particular layer of the Undersenate are selected, starting with layer 1 and proceeding upwards in order.
During each round, there is a threshold: the minimal number of votes that any person must collect in order to win a seat.
Each round has two parts.
Part I of round n involves only the representatives in layer n-1. In round 1, the "representatives in layer n-1" are just the Electorate.
At the beginning of Part I of each round, each participating representative starts out with one vote.
During Part I of round n, each representative in layer n-1 may lend their vote to any other member of the electorate who will accept it
A lent vote may be transferred again by the recipient. Each single vote may be transferred a number of times.
At the end of Part I, the destination of each member's vote becomes public knowledge.
During Part II, each layer of the Allsenate below layer n-1, in descending order, has a chance to examine how their representatives are voting (and how their indirect representatives are voting). At this time, each member may choose to reassign their vote to any representative of the layer immediately above them who will accept it.
At this time, a representative may also choose to give back votes that they had previously collected (i.e. to withdraw their acceptance of that vote).
A member may only participate in Part II of later rounds only if they participated, either by lending or by accepting a vote, in Part I of each round in which they were an active representative.
At the end of each round n, the number of delegated votes held by each representative are calculated. Each member of the Electorate has one vote. The votes held by the representatives of layer 1 are the sum of the votes of the members in their constituency. Next, the votes held by the representatives of layer 2 are calculated as the sum of the votes of the members in their constituency. And so on, until the number of delegated votes held by the representatives of layer n-1 have been calculated.
In Part I, we found out who received the vote of each representative of layer n-1; at this point, we now know the relative strengths of those votes. Therefore, we can now calculate how many delegated votes were received by each member of the electorate in the current round.
At this point, those members of the electorate who have collected more than the vote threshold for that round win a seat in the relevant layer of the Allsenate, and the results of this round are announced.
Even though, as a consequence of Part II of future rounds, a representative may lose votes before the election terminates, pushing them below their threshold, they remain representatives.
After the end of the election, after the representatives have been selected and announced, forfeit votes are assigned as provided in sections below.
In between elections, for the purpose of recall votes and replacement votes, Undersenators vote with strength proportional to the delegated votes that they received in the previous election.
However, each Senator has one equal vote in Senate business; the number of delegated votes that they received in the election has no effect after the election.
A member who had been elected as a representative of layer n-1 in the previous round and who is also elected as a representative of layer n in the current round forfeits their position as a representative of layer n-1 and hence forfeits the votes that they had collected directly from representatives in layer n-2.
These votes, as well as votes which disappeared because they were last held by a member who did not achieve some round's threshold and hence did not become a representative in the next round, are not lost, however; they are still active, and the holder of such a vote may reassign it during Part II of the next round to any representative in the layer immediately above hir.
After the final round, after the representatives have been selected, the forfeit votes of a member who had been elected as a representative of the layer below the Senate and who then was elected into the Senate are distributed between the direct constituents of the new Senator in proportion to their votes68.
After the final round, after the representatives have been selected, votes which were last held by a member who did not achieve the round's threshold are randomly divided between all of the Senators in proportion to their votes69.
A member of the electorate may, at any time when they are voting, anonymously opt to cast a secret ballot in addition to their public ballot.
If they do this, their public ballot is invalidated, but in an anonymous fashion so that it seems to everyone else that is is still active.
The secret ballot does not take effect until the final round of senatorial elections. Even then, these effects are anonymous.
If a representative casts an anonymous secret ballot, the secret ballot substitues for only their single, personal vote. The votes that they cast on behalf of others are unaffected.
No representative may give or accept or lend or borrow any money or gifts or exchange goods or services or have any business relationship with any of their direct constituents.
Define "ceil(x)" to be the least integer greater than x, and "log(x)" to be the natural log of x (sometimes written "ln(x)").
Define P to be the number of individuals in the Electorate.
The number of representatives in the Senate shall be floor(log(P)). For brevity, let S = ceil(log(P)).
The number of layers within the Undersenate shall be floor(sqrt(S)) - 2. For brevity, let L = floor(sqrt(S)) - 1.
Let $k = (log(P)/log(S) -1 - L)/(\sum_{j=1}^L j)$.
Denote the threshold of layer n by T_n (where layers 1 thru L-1 correspond to the Undersenate, and layer L corresponds to the Senate). This threshold is determined by:
\begin{align*} T_n = ceil(\prod_{i=1}^n S^{1 + k (L - i)}) \end{align*}
First, I decided what I thought the size of the senate should be. I wanted a formula that took as input the size of the electorate, and yielded the size of the Senate. I wanted this formula to be scalable, that is, to give reasonable answers for moderately small groups and also for groups the size of the entire population of Earth, and larger. In numerical terms, I require a rule that scales for groups of about 1000 up to groups of about 9 billion. If possible, it would be nice if the rule would scale down to about 15 and up to about 1e12.
Some approximate example group sizes to help get a handle on these numbers:
| 30 | the number of students in a small graduate program | ||||
| 65 | the number of students in my elementary school class | ||||
| 600 | the number of students in my high school class | ||||
| 1900 | the number of developers in Debian 70 | ||||
| 2500 | the number of UCSD graduate students71 | ||||
| 1.2e6 | the population of San Diego | ||||
| 3.5e8 | the population of the USA | ||||
| 6e9 | the (current) population of the Earth | ||||
| 1e12 | 100x an estimate of the peak population of the Earth during this century72 |
Size of representative bodies in this system with those numbers, and 8,15 and 1e18 thrown in just to see what happens with really small and with ridiculously large groups73
:
| 5 | |||
| 8 | |||
| 15 | |||
| 30 | |||
| 65 | |||
| 600 | |||
| 1900 | |||
| 2500 | |||
| 1.2e6 | |||
| 3.5e8 | |||
| 6e9 | |||
| 1e12 | |||
| 1e18 |
By the reasoning given elsewhere, I felt that the current size of the U.S. Senate, 100, is significantly too large. The Senate, I feel, should be as small as possible, a tiny body that is small enough to sit down together and have serious discussions; the only reason it needs to grow with population at all is to allow all of the major political viewpoints to have a voice (and to allow each major viewpoint to be represented by more than one member so that the personal preferences of one person doesn't overly dominate the expression of the will of their faction).
Let me emphasize that: I see the proper role of the Senate as a guide for public discourse and a focus for attention. So, the number of Senators should grow in proportion to the number of points of view that the public should be made to focus upon. This is in opposition to an idea in which the number of Senators should grow roughly in proportion to the size of the population itself, in order to ensure each faction of some fixed size at least one representative in the Senate.
Now, the simple fact is that, no matter how much you would like the public to devote sufficient time to be able to understand all of the subtleties of politics, that people will refuse (and rightly so) to spend too much time on this, and so the media will simplify the world into a small number of factions. In the United States today, by looking at how the media talks about political factions, I guess they divide domestic politics into about 6 factions: (religious Republicans, other Republicans, anti-corporate Democrats, other Democrats, greens, "other"). So let's say that the magic number is between 5 and 7. Since we will allow each of these factions (except "other") to field 2 reps, we have a body of at least 9 to 13. Now, if even the small factions such as the greens have 2 reps, surely some of the larger ones will have more. So we want a Senate of about 13 to 24 members.
Nth-root formulas are one alterantive, but n must be 6 or more in order to bring the Senate below 50 for 350,000,000 people. I worry that this scheme would not scale too well if the population continues to increase exponentially. For example, for 18 trillion people, the 6-th root rule yields about 162 senators, which seems like a lot to me. Does this fit with out intuitions? This would mean that with a population 3000 times larger than the current population of the entire Earth, the media would pretend that there is about 40-56 factions. This seems like too many to me.
On the other end of the scale, this formula gives Senate sizes that I feel are too slightly too low for small groups. For example, the 6-th root rule would give 3 senators for a group of 500, which seems like too few; would a 500 employee company have a board of directors of only 3 people?
In addition, the 6 seems like a kludge.
All in all a 6-th root rule would not be too bad, but log seems better. Log gives answers that seem better for very small and very large groups.
To start with, I tried natural log. log(350000000) \approx 19.7, which seems like a reasonable size for the Senate of the United States. log(25e9) \approx 24, so even with a population of more than twice current projections for the maximum world population within the forseeable future, this rule yields a suitably small Senate size. log(18e12) is only 30.5. Does this fit with out intuitions? This would mean that even with a population 3000 times larger than the current population of the entire Earth, the media would pretend that there is only about 7-11 factions. This seems too small to me, but I think it's closer than the guess of 40.
On the other end of the scale, for a 30 person group, which is about the size of the computational neurobiology graduate subprogram that until recently i was part of, we get a senate of 3.4, which seems about right. For a 65 person group, about the size of my class in elementary school we get a senate of 4.2, which also seems reasonable. For a
One model that would justify this is if we assume that the cognitive cost of holding in mind n factions is exponential in the number of factions, and the benefits of adding a new faction is directly proportional to the number of people who will be represented by that faction.
In this case, if we have P people and F factions, then that must be because the benefits of creating the last faction outweighed the costs. The benefits are proportional to P/F. The costs are proportional to exp(F) - exp(F-1). We have
exp(F) - exp(F-1) = P/F
F*(exp(F) - exp(F-1)) = P
F*(F e^{F-1} - e^{F-1}) = P
F*e^{F-1}*(F - 1) = P
ln F*e^{F-1}*(F - 1) = ln P
ln (F*(F-1)) + ln(e^{F-1}) = ln P
ln (F*(F-1)) + F-1 = ln P
F = O(ln P)
Natural log seems to wor
For example, according to http://physics.ucsd.edu/was-sdphul/dept/pr/gintro.html, UCSD currently has on the order of 2500 graduate students. The Senate would correspond to the size of the Graduate Student Council, our student government.
\begin{comment} (log_S P -1 - L)/(\sum_{j=1}^L j) = k
log_S P = 1 + L + k*(\sum_{j=1}^L j)
log_S P = log_S S^{1 + L + k*(\sum_{j=1}^L j)}
P = S^{1 + L + k*(\sum_{j=1}^L j)}
P = S^{1 + L + k + 2*k + .... + ik + .... + L*K}
P = S^{1 + (1 + k) + (1 + 2*k) + .... + (1 + ik) + .... + (1 + L*K)}
P = \prod_{i=0}^L S^1 S^{1 + k} S^{1 + 2*k} * ... * S^{1 + ik} * .... * S^{1 + L*K}
P = \prod_{i=0}^L S^{1+k i}
x = \prod_{i=0}^{ceil(log(ceil(log(x))))} (ceil(log(x))^{1+k i}
If each individual in the electorate
74 \end{comment}
Corporation: An abstract entity representing a group of people in some capacity which is not itself capable of consciousness.
Person: Sentient being.
Renew: A Renewable bill may be Renewed by being repassed, exactly as before, except with dates advanced to the current time period.75
Renewable: A bill is Renewable if it specifies in its text that it is Renewable.
note: neither the senate, the BFA, nor the ministers have sole jurisdiction over anything -- policy in all spheres can be set by statue. (this is in contrast with certain theories of the USA constitution, which hold that the president as "commander-in-chief" has sole authority to decide on military matters. of course, in most occasions it would not be wise for the legislature to issue orders directly to the battlefield, but i trust that the either the house of the people or the senators would show some restraint when it is needed)
--
note: the Senate needs to have a Condorcet winner in order to replace the current Prime Minister. So we don't care if they have an even number of members, because ties aren't bad.
exception: directly after Senate elections, the first order of business for the new Senate is to decide whether or not to replace the current P.M. This is not treated like a replacement, but like a clean selection; i.e., in order for the current P.M. to stay, s/he must be the Condorcet winner of the new senate's vote. If there is not Condorcet winner of the Senate vote, then the House of the People vote on the remaining candidates. In this secondary vote, we use a modified Condorcet method that always yields an answer even if there is no Condorcet winner.
note: the House of the People may dismiss the P.M. with a 2/3 vote without a reason. In this case the Senate must find candidates and hold another vote, just as if it were a new senate, except that the current P.M. can't be a candidate.
during such "new senate" elections, the current PM remains the PM until the new guy is selected; with the exception that the House of the People can choose to dismiss the PM immediately if they want (they acheiving the 2/3 to dismiss, they only need a simple majority to modify the dismissal to make it an immediate dismissal). Such a resolution by the HOP may specify who the acting PM will be; otherwise, it is the newest Censor. (in other cases, like accidental death, the Senate should specify a procedure by statue).
---
todo: http://www.hrcr.org/chart/categories.html
todo: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=comparative+constitutional&btnG=Search
todo:
antitrust (votes) judge appointment and impeachment geographic districts
todo:
check out political science on federalism
http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/archive/ http://www.federalism-e.com/
analyze if there is any place where i should put in range voting (i'm thinking the censor, at least). i like condorcet when the votes are public and the voters are experienced (i.e. senators voting for a prime minister) because then if they exaggerate their votes for strategic reasons and screw everything up, it's their own fault and they'll be held accountable (http://rangevoting.org/rangeVcond.html claims that condorcet is "allergic" to strategic voting).
however, i am swayed to allow either condorcet or a form of range voting (perhaps approval voting) when the inexperienced public is voting.
todo: pay for defined high officials todo: regular election for parliament todo: no gerrymandering
todo: can't switch voluntary senatorial constituencies until your candidate is reclled/is up for new election (o/w you could "double your vote" by voting once is constituency A, then immediately switching to constituency B and voting again)
todo: principle of Subsidiarity (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Charter_of_Local_Self-Government)
Footnotes:
1. This is less verbose but has the same effect as Article 2 of the United Nations Declaration, which reads "everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty".
2. Part of Article 3 of the UN Declaration, rephrased as a negative right -- lest this right be interpreted as an obligation for the law to keep each person alive as long as possible
3. More from Article 3 of the UN Declaration, again rephrased as negative, lest this right be interpreted as an obligation for the law to heal any paralyzed person whenever possible
4. More from Article 3 of the UN Declaration, again rephrased as negative, lest this right be interpreted as an obligation for the law to protect any person from natural dangers whenever possible
5. Article 4 of the UN Declaration
6. Article 5 of the UN Declaration
7. Article 6 of the UN Declaration
8. Slightly watered down version of Article 7 of the UN Declaration. Watered down because we want to ensure that the Basic Rights impose only negative, not positive, obligations -- the original text of UN Article 7 could be construed to place a positive obligation upon the law to enforce equality.
9. Article 9 of the UN Declaration
10. Modified version of Article 10 of the UN Declaration; I took out "in full equality" because it was redundant
11. Article 11.1 of the UN Declaration
12. Article 11.2 of the UN Declaration
13. Conciser version of Article 12 of the UN Declaration, without the bit about defamation, because it is incompatible with freedom of speech
14. Article 19 of the UN Declaration
15. Article 13.1 of the UN Declaration
16. Article 13.2 of the UN Declaration
17. Concise version of article ?? of the UN Declaration
18. Article 20.1 of the UN Declaration
19. Article 20.2 of the UN Declaration
20. Article 21.1 of the UN Declaration
21. Article 21.2 of the UN Declaration
22. todo: is this a matter for the federal government?
23. This seems to be a strange right. It is put here only because "Educate the people" has been listed below as one of the "other powers possesed by government". I worry that, absent this right, the government might someday find ways to twist the word "educate" to include propaganda, 're-education camps', brainwashing, or forcing statements of agreement with the government's views (on the grounds that if you don't agree, you must not really understand, and therefore must be subjected to further education)
24. Many of these should be immediately restricted by statue soon after the formation of government; but I wanted such restrictions to be statutory rather than constitutional.
25. You'd think that I'd already covered this, but since this is a prioritized list, I want to make it clear that these negative obligation supercedes the positive obligations below.
26. This is different from the previous two because this is an affirmative obligation rather than a negative one
27. Some of the civil rights, for example, the right to verify the authorization of government agents, may require the government to provide some service
28. So, the people's will must be followed, but only when doing so does not infringe on the rights of a minority
29. This fixes two problems in the USA system. (1) In the USA, when there are two opposing factions each of which have close to 50% of the vote, the fulcrum of power thrashes back and forth as one faction or another gets slightly more than 50%, and each faction imposes its policy during its brief stay in power, leading to policy instability. With a threshold of 60%, however, the vote would have to change by 20% before a policy may be replaced by its opposite. (2) For whatever reason, the USA system seems to structurally tends towards having two parties each of which control 50% of the vote. There is little incentive for compromise between parties, and this leads to partisanship/infighting. With a 60% threshold, even if the system unintentionally creates two parties of roughly equal power, those parties will have to compromise in order to pass bills.
30. Because I belive "consensus"-ish processes are workable and good, I'd like to make this threshold higher, say 75%, but I'm being conservative by remaining closer to current practice.
31. To date, governments have been observed to have a bias towards increasing their size and power. This provision is intended to fight against that bias.
32. This makes it easy to reduce the amount of legal text, aiding simplicity.
33. Another provision intended to correct for the tendency of governments to increase their own size and power.
34. I'd like to make this even higher, say 90%, but I am being conservative by remaining closer to current practice.
35. Some bills, such as budgets, must regularly be re-issued and have very bad consequences (such as non-payment of government employees and defaults on debt) if they are not re-issued on time. A high voting threshold could make it hard to pass these bills on time. Therefore, such bills may be marked "Rewewable", in which case, as a stopgap measure, the bill may be re-issued exactly as before if a compromise cannot be reached.
36. The Tribunes are an idea I took from Simon Bolivar's four part government; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricameralism. He called them Censors, but I renamed it to Tribune because of the association of the word Censor with "censorship". The Tribunes are "prosecuting attorneys against the government". They are a combination investigative jornalist and prosecutor. They can be expected to investigate, expose, embarrass, persecute, and prosecute the government. Sometimes you hear the phrase "enemy of the state". The Tribunes are the enemy of the government.
37. todo: compare to # of USA supreme court cases/yr. The limit is of course there only so as to prevent the Forced Clarification cases from taking up too much of the Legislature's time. I think they could probably handle around 30, not 10, per year, since if there were 30 then i would expect that most of the time I expect the cases to be clarifications on some minor law of no popular concern, but I want to be cautious here, since some years perhaps many of the Forced Clarifications would be issues of popular concern, prompting extended debate
38. a "bug" in the code of law
39. <To prevent the government from simply creating one or two large provinces to fulfill the obligation of the previous sentence. The provinces, through their militias, are supposed to be an effective, last-resort local check against centralized tyranny.
40. For example, it is permissible to spend extra money on schools or police in poor areas. Another example: recognizing that a legal system based on procedural fairness in effect gives power to those who can hire more lawyers, it is permissible to skew the procedure in favor of the poor, for example by directing the courts to charge the rich legal fees in proportion to their wealth which are put into a fund to pay for lawyers for the poor
41. Following up the previous example, it is not permissible to assess extra legal fees to the rich which are more than proportional to their wealth, as this would not equalize effective power of the rich and the poor, but would actually put the rich at a disadvantage.
42. Part of Article 21.3 of the UN Declaration; I removed the bit about the will being expression through elections, since here the will is also expressed through direct democracy
43. Part of Article 21.3 of the UN Declaration, except that we allow the possiblity of voter qualification
44. In the U.S.A. for example, supreme court judges are appointed for life. What will happen if medical technology extends expected lifespan to 300 years? This principal prevents such problems.
45. For example: the creation of a complex procedure that allows citizens to retain their rights, but only if they can successfully navigate the procedure, puts the burden upon the citizens of doing a large amount of computation. In the USA system, this happens in the legal arena; people are forced to pay large amounts of money to hire law firms, which do a large amount of computation (learning about the law, learning about court procedure, creating motions and documents to submit to the judge) in order to effectively retain their rights. If an individual submits a motion at the wrong time, they are not allowed to say, "Your honor, I don't have time to properly learn your court's procedure, and I couldn't afford to hire a lawyer".
46. Another example is when the body of law grows too large; people are held responsible for following laws which they do not know exist, and it would be impractically expensive to read through and become aware of all of the laws which bind one.
47. The point of this principle is to prevent things like the use of the military to keep order domestically (without the declaration of some Emergency Condition), or the use of the foreign intelligence agency to spy domestically.
48. <for example, making it so that one is more likely to be called to jury duty if one votes
49. One could imagine that, as a compromise or as a tactical maneuver, the Legislature might wish to pass an annual budget without a Renewable mark. This could cause trouble the next year if a new budget could not agreed upon in a timely manner. Therefore, it is prohibited.
50. every now and then, people will insist on ignoring some provision or another of the Constitution, and they'll have about the level of support needed to amend the Constitution. In this case, nothing can stop them from doing what they like. To encourage the Legislature to just ignore the Constitution in that one particular case, rather than just removing the relevant restriction permanently, I've made it slightly easier for them to do the former. With the current thresholds, it takes 50% to pass a "privilaged" bill, 60% to pass an "ordinary" bill, 66% to pass a "difficult" bill, 70% to ignore the Constitution in a particular case, and 75% to amend it permanently.
51. Why force an election for Prime Minister, rather than allowing the current Prime Minister to continue in office unless replaced? Imagine that the Senate is split evenly between a number of major factions, so that there is no single Condorcet winner during an election for Prime Minister. This is fine in the short term, because the House breaks the tie. However, after this Prime Minister is put into power, the other losing factions will not be able to vote out this Prime Minister by mustering a Condorcet winner to replace hir; therefore the initial winner would remain in power indefinitely until their death or until their faction lost power. This does not seem fair because the winning faction is actually tied with a number of other factions in terms of votes, yet those other factions are deprived of influence over the Prime Minister. The root cause of this is the provision that when there is a (Condorcet) tie, the current Prime Minister remains in power; that is, the current Prime Minister enjoys additional status merely by being the "default". The present provision limits this special status to the duration of time in between Senatorial elections, ensuring that at least as often as Senatorial elections are held, the incumbent Prime Minister loses this advantage.
52. This provision ensures stability when there is no clear winner by favoring the incumbent. Note, however, that the incumbent loses this advantage after each Senatorial election.
53. Practically speaking, retreating soldiers will fight for their lives while retreating whether or not they are legally authorized to use force. We accept this and make it legal. Similarly, we do not expect our soldiers to allow the enemy to capture our equipment. However, the "absolute minimum...necessary" part ensures that this is not made into a loophole with which to attack or to extract retribution from the enemy without the consent of the Legislature.
54. The intent is to force the Foreign Minister to seek the approval of the Legislature for any use of force, even defensively, except when a surprise attack is launched, in which case a response must be made before the Legislature has time to deliberate. Now, imagine the case in which there are many small unknown military groups, any one of which might at any time pop up and attack. Clearly, the Foreign Minister must be authorized to defend against these attacks when they happen. But there cannot be a declaration of war against a nonspecific enemy. So it would seem that there is no way for the Foreign Minister to seek approval in advance. This is covered by the surprise exception because, whichever one attacks, the Foreign Minister wouldn't have known that that particular, specific group would attack, only that some group would probably attack. If, on the other hand, the Foreign Minister's intelligence had in fact, more than a month ago, ascertained the identities of some of these groups and decided that they might attack soon, then it would be possible for the Foreign Minister to seek the consent of the Legislature, so in this case the Foreign Minister is compelled to seek the consent of the Legislature in order to respond
55. I.e. a War Against Drugs or a War Against Terrorism is prohibited
56. Can the Legislature micromanage the conduct of a war? They cannot directly issue orders to the military, but they can dismiss the Foreign Minister and replace hir with someone more to their liking. They can also set policies which the Foreign Minister is obliged to follow as s/he issues orders to the military.
57. It may be impractical to take the time to talk to these entities before dealing with the emergency, but the intent is that if/when they do hear about it, they will agree that it is an emergency. Basically, emergency conditions may only be imposed by near-consensus
58. So if, during the Emergency, the Prime Minister or other attacker manages to replace, say, the Tribunes with new Tribunes, or perhaps to raise the number of total Tribunes and appoint ones loyal to hir, then the old Tribunes can still cancel the Emergency; same with the Senators.
59. So even if a majority of these individuals are kidnapped or killed, a majority of the remaining ones can still cancel the Emergency Condition
60. In this way, Martial Law concentrates power less than the Enabling Act which played a part in Hitler's rise to power
61. this was in fact similar to the mechanism for Hitler's rise to power; see the Enabling Act, which was passed during a state of emergency established by the Reichstag Fire Decree, during which normal deliberation was suppressed (Communist and some Social Democratic representatives had been arrested, and the Reichstag was intimidated by the SA during voting). The Enabling Act permitted Hitler to ignore the constitution. With this power, he turned the legislature into his puppet and had the Enabling Act renewed.
62. For example, the Legislature may make a statue that delegates monetary policy to a quasi-independent agency, and that the Legislature cannot interfere with monetary policy without a 2/3 vote
63. So, for instance, a bill to delegate all decisions about the money supply to a Federal Reserve would require 2/3, because increasing the money supply requires 2/3. But a bill to delegate only the power to reduce the money supply, not the power to increase it, would only require 60%.
64. An infeasibly massive expense, you say? Yes, if the courts operated as USA courts do today, where trials with at least one rich party can cost huge amounts of money for all involved. But in this system, the State will have a strong incentive to reduce the cost of justice by reducing the amount of lawyer-hours that must be spent per case. You may claim this is unfair; but is it not unfair to have a system where the number of lawyer hours is such that it is infeasible for the State to pay for them, so that poor individuals must be effectively deprived of their rights?
65. No binding "precedent" is set by prior court decisions. This is a civil law system, not a common law system
66. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_law claims that this principal encourages a less litigious (sp) society
67. By contrast, consider the alternatives in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stare_decisis#How_judges_interpret_statutes. I chose to have the judges simply interpret the law because of the design goal of simplicity
68. This step is necessary so, on the one hand, Senators are not also Undersenators, and on the other hand, each person who cast a vote is represented in the Senate.
69. This allows groups of voters to choose to "infilitrate" the other candidates' constituencies against their will, and therefore expose them to criticism and recall. However, since this infiltration is spread over all of the candidates, infiltrators cannot hope to target any particular enemy, so this is not a good strategy for attacking a particular opponent; long before you had the numbers to inject a significant number of your supporters into a particular opponent's constituency, you would have the opportunity to instead elect another candidate supporting your faction into the Senate. I suppose that the strategic effect of this clause will be small, and that the greatest effect will be to interject a tiny amount of cross-factional dialog into the Undersenate
70. by counting the names in http://www.debian.org/devel/people
71. according to according to http://physics.ucsd.edu/was-sdphul/dept/pr/gintro.html
72. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population#Forecast_of_world_population, among other places
73. 1e18 is one estimate for the population supportable by a Dyson sphere (or swarm, whatever):
To estimate the population supportable by a Dyson sphere, I'll look at energy and land. The total energy output of the sun is about 4e26 watts (according to http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-dyson-sphere.htm and http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/dysonFAQ.html). The current energy flux into the Earth is about 174e15 watts (according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget). So energy-wise, a Dyson sphere would gain a factor of about 10^11 compared to the Earth. A Dyson sphere with a radius of one AU would have a surface area of at least 2.72e17 km^2, around 600 million times the surface area of the Earth. (according to http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/dysonFAQ.html). http://users.rcn.com/jasp.javanet/dyson/ estimates a factor of about 300 million. So land-wise, that's a factor of about 10^8 compared to the Earth. So land appears to be the bottleneck. So we estimate a population gain of about 10^8. http://class.ee.iastate.edu/berleant/home/Research/Future/Course/sessionGott.html agrees with this estimate.
A current estimate for the peak population of the Earth, for the foreseeable future, is about 9e9; multiplied by 10^8, we get something on the order of 1e18.
Of course, if we were to build a Dyson sphere, other things would probably change in the meantime that would render these estimates incorrect, and perhaps someday there could be an assemblage of more than 1e18 individuals. But 1e18 is anyhow a number that is much, much, much, larger than anything we'll have to deal with in the forseeable future, so in any case, it's a ridiculously large number.
74. "voluntary constituencies"
75. For example, a budget for 2006 may be Renewed
