The New Legal Module
Kara Zor El
Look everbody! It's me writing another article again! What can I say? I'm inspired. Last time we met, I put forth my ridiculous idea for category #2 in Gnilraps contest. Hopefully, it meets the standards to win. This time, I'm going to choose the more serious route and lay out my idea for a new and cool feature in eRep; answering the question:
"With all of the huge piles of greenbacks Plato is rolling in from the MU Contest, what ONE cool feature should they develop for our game?"
I propose that a new Court System module be created. Included, would be a Military Court system. It would involve many aspects and be complicated. There would be judges, lawyers, plaintiffs, defendants, juries, court clerks & a bailiff to make sure procedure is followed. There would be an appeals and supreme court. There would be would be a set of laws and designated ingame penalties for breaking each law. There would be court procedures which each participant would have to follow. All court proceeding would take place in an ingame forum type setting.
Judges
Players who desire to become judges would have to pass a test (bar exam) to prove they are qualified to conduct proceedings. They would have to demonstarte familiarity with all court procedures and all laws. Only those who receive certification can run for a judge's seat in an ingame election which they will have to campaign for. The amount of judge's seats available will be determined by a pecentage of the population in each country.
Lawyers
Anyone who candidates for judge and fails to get a seat would have 24 hours to decide whetheror not to accept a positon as a public defender. Any spots left open for public defender will be filled by those who candidate for the public defender position. Potential lawyers must pass a bar exam before they can run ingame. Those who get elected will become public defenders and serve with no compensation. Retired public defenders and unelected qualified lawyers can sell their attorney skills to those who afford to pay them. Lawyers would be respopnsible for making sure plaintiffs and defendants know how to conduct themself in court.
Juries
Jury Pools will be picked at random like in RL. You will receive a notice ingame that you have been chosen for a jury. You are obligated to participate. If you get chosen from the pool, participate and deliver a verdict or see the case through, you get a 5 gold medal for service. If you do not get chosen for the case, you get 2 gold for your trouble.
If you do not respond to the jury summons or click on the option to refuse, then you will be fined and lose all ingane voting rights for at least 30 days. You may ask for a later date. You may appeal for hardship reasons. You may not be required to serve in a jury within 90 days of serving previously.
Court Clerks
Maintain and upkeep all court files and written procedures.
Bailiff
Keeps order in the court and moderates proceedings. Must pass bar exam. Position is not elected, but rather an assigned post.
Appeals Court
Certain cases are appealabe and this court is where it happens.
Supreme Court
This court is similar to RL in the kind of cases it decides and how it is formed. The President will nominate people and the Congress will vote on who fills the court. Appointments are lifetime and retired judge's positons will be replaced by the same process of Presidential nomination and Congress approval.
Military Court
Any issues involving the military or MU's would be dealt with in this Court. There would be a JAG and Sergeant at Arms. In this court, you can have a regiment captain put on trial for insubordination (setting wrong DO, inactivity, etc.). A guilty verdict or non appearance will result in removal from the Captain position and the Commander can assign a new one. You could also put someone on trial for fighting on the enemy's side in an important battle and temporarily take away ingame privileges (i.e use of rockets, zookas, and EB's) as punishment.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea. I hope you enjoyed reading this. Happy clicking.
Comments
Nifty idea!
Oh, goodness. All the frivolous lawsuits. I don't know if it would be funny or bog down the system.
Bog down, but would make even div1 citizens "peers"... Like the idea but get done right is probaly a whole game in its self.
What are you going to do, try people for violating external forum rules? fail
We are going to try you for treason and banish you from the USA to Canada. I'll show up for that jury summons.
Awesome idea would love a RGR free America 😃
lololol that is implausible to implement.
as implausible as an AFA Potus ... ahah
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It's not gonna fly. If it did the first 2 to be put I trial for genocide would be Romper and Scymex. And Plato would loose valued customers xD
Dont forget Flausino and Argrob 😛
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Why do I get the strange feeling that this would be awesome?
i like this idea.... however i would be happy if they would just reintroduce the economic module back to this game however i know that wont happen because if we are able to make our own money then we wouldnt need to buy gold... so yes ... this idea is great !
Interesting.
You realise this idea will be turned into a revenge tool for those in power. : )
A banishment law sounds like a great idea at this point.
eCanada had a Supreme Court very similar to the one described above. But without any real power to enforce its decisions in-game and a dedicated group who trolled the Courts, the SC was not able to accomplish much except set up eCanada for a major civil war when it's Congress pardoned a guy who stole 6000 Gold from the govt and PTOed most of the Top 5 parties.
Court system won't work without a 'police' to enforce its rule.
Enforcement wold be an automatic game response to ingame court rulings. If I sued you for breaching a contract and won the ruling, your account would be charged and I would be compensated. I f you are banished for treason, the game does it.
Makes sense.
Admins had once agreed to enforce all constitutionally defined govt departments and would have performed this policing function had the game not taking a different direction.
Encoding it in the game would have radically altered certain outcomes.
😮 This is actually a really good idea!!
This would be immensely complicated to introduce and would likely put more people off than it would attract (a key point for developers). It could also make things even more bitter ingame. However, the main problem would be the fact that all countries would, presumably, be getting the same legal system. I know that this is true for the political setup but that is basically a simple elective process, dressed up with some rl names & terminology. The legal system would be somewhat different.
For a start, you'd have to agree on a legal system, (there a re 4 main ones to choose from) taking into account such things as: Should it include the right to trial by jury? Are defendants considered to be innocent until proven guilty? Should it be an adversarial or an inquisitorial system? etc etc etc
interesting.
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would be ripe for abuse...
Jury system wouldn't work.
However, if the supreme Court and Congress and the President all approved (with super majorities in the congress and SC) a deportation (loss of citizenship) then having a Supreme Court would be worth it.
We need to give the government some power to punish people.
This would also help solve PTO problems.
In theory, this might be cool and useful, but... In reality... Frivolous cases + too complex for Plato's crowd--never happening.
It would be nice to have this but we'd really need to trust the people we let be judges. I would love this to be done though - it would stamp on all those multis and naughty people 🙂
Would be interesting to see how admin would deal with 'abuse of power' issues. Of course there would be buying off of judges and jury tampering to start with. Then the newest meta-game feature "Power Bosses". They would run the political parties from the shadows by manipulating judges and... oh wait... we already have those! lol
LET THE CORRUPTION AND MAYHEM BEGIN!
I'm reading all the reasons why you all think it won't work, the abuse of power, and too complicated. What some of you may have failed to realize is that I mentioned this has been done before on a smaller scale. We had a court system in one of the old eusa forums. There were contracts drawn up for business deals and you could sue for damages. There was at least one judge, lawyers, spectators and a jury sometimes. I just expanded on the idea to fit ingame play and purposefully made it more complicated. Oh and if you think a judge is corrupt, vote him out. The appeals process deals with that issue also. I could totally even complicate this more with minute details on how to enact and implement this, but I won't bore you.
Replacing the courts with the military as the third branch of government in 2010 was probably one of the worse ideas we in Congress had at the time. It was one of many factors that lead to the death of the courts, but some cited it as a main reason. I still miss Alee Ann. He was a troll's troll.
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I love you Kara. This is actually a REAL idea! ♥
I can see where it would be beyond useful... I can also see where it could be used for frivolity, BUT if the jurors are random and attorneys have the right to pick jurors.. It could grow very interesting. I do see issues though.
If they can't code it in ten seconds, and make money from it, it won't be done - as you know.
Some good ideas, for another game.
~hyuu~
The one problem I see is how do you get jurors that are actually active people? instead of dead or 2 clickers?
Then they get fined and they didn't even want anything to do with it...
Or they aren't there to respond to it.
Chuck Norris injures represented people
This is a shit idea : /
Remember the 'lulz-court' on the forum? That was role-play hell.
For as terrible as the court was on the US forum, the Canadian one was 20 times more ridiculous.
I do feel that this would be terribly abused. For example, Ajay. As big of a jerk that he can sometimes be, this would be used to just repeatedly boot-stomp him, by anybody who gets the whim.
Guess I should read the comments before commenting :/
Well honestly he needs that repeated boot stomp..
Not all countries have that justice system. Thank Science for that..
I support this, think it would spice up the game and give some well deserved justice to people like RGR,(crimes against ehumanity in eUSA and other enations). Also would like to serve on a jury and see what the deal would be like.
Its a good idea, but i think its to hard to implement/to complicated plus it gives people too much power.
Anyone that wanna donate to our Defence and Fighting Forces Send a mail to me ( Gold and Money both good )
like the idea