proj-liquidRepublic-bylaws-highCourt

The High Court

The High Court interprets the rules, judges disputes, protects the rights of the weak against the popular or powerful, guards against technical 'bugs' in the legal code, and clarifies/simplifies rules. The High Court is a panel composed of the Judges.

Bringing Cases

The High Court does not take action unless and until a case is brought to it.

A case may be brought to the High Court in any one the following ways:

• any Chair may bring a case against any individual or organization which alleges corruption or violation of procedure
• any office of the organization may bring a case against some other part of the organization alleging violation of procedure
• all of the Chairs except one, acting jointly, may bring a case against a Chair which alleges that a request or series of requests for information is excessive
• any legislative house or Chair may delay the passage of a measure by referring it to the High Court to check its conformance with these bylaws
• a case is brought upon the passage of a resolution declaring some Parliamentarian or Judge medically incompetent or corrupt
• if there are no other courts, any voter may bring a case against any other voter for violation of any rule.

If a case is brought by any of the previous methods, the High Court is obliged to accept it. In addition, if there are other courts, the losing party may appeal a case in another court, and the High Court may choose to accept the case by majority vote.

In addition, any voter may bring a case against the organization for violation of the voter's rights or a violation of procedure which impacts the voter -- such a case must be taken by some court, but not neccesarily by the High Court.

Jurisdiction

The Office of Procedure has final jurisdiction over questions of procedural details within each house of the legislature, including the determination of vote thresholds. The High Court is obliged to respect the Office of Procedure's decisions in such cases, except in case of corruption or medical incompetence. In all other matters the High Court has final jurisdiction.

Powers

The High Court has the power to decide the case at hand, except when the case falls under the jurisdiction of the Office of Procedure.

Whether or not prompted by a case, the High Court can take other actions in addition to deciding the case:

• strike down rules that are in conflict with other rules which take precendence over them (see order of precedence)
• Force Clarification
• create statues when Forced Clarification fails
• declare Found Rights
• Suggest Simplification

Not bound by precedent

The High Court may find a rule legal at one time and then later strike it down, or vice versa. However, Jurisprudence constante can apply.

Force Clarification

The High 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.

The High Court may Force Clarification in cases which, in its judgement, meet one of the following criteria:

• There is ambiguity in the law.
• The law does not address a situation which reason and common sense demand be addressed by law, such that leaving the situation un-addressed leads to an absurd result.
• The law produces an unjust and unintentional result1