HKassa wrote:I am totally for this measure, I would just add a part that tells us who or what has the authority to decide reasonable force from excessive force. If I could co-author I would suggest that the WA Security Counsel be allowed to decide the aforementioned.
oh and PS i was asking to be a co-author
Um, with respect, no. Apart from such a stipulation being (as far as I can see) utterly illegal, the draft already says who has the authority to make these decisions (the judiciary) and, as well as that, such a duty is not within the remit of the Security Council.
Connopolis wrote:Ossitania wrote:Okay, as a replacement for "comparable to", how does "within a reasonable degree of" sound? Thoughts?
I whole-heartedly support the intentions of this proposal, however, the ambiguity presented by subjective criteria such as "comparable to," or "within a reasonable degree of" concerns my delegation. Perhaps this can be solved by modifying this clause:
PLACES the duty of ascertaining whether the force used in such situations was reasonable or not in the hands of an unbiased judiciary influenced only by credible evidence presented.
I feel that the ambiguous phrases are not the causes of the possible abuse; rather, the fault lies with the "judiciary." The wording of my modification might be a bit awkward, so I would suggest you change it to your liking. Regardless, as we've stated earlier, this has our undying support.
Yours in watching sisyphys roll a boulder up a hill with apparent ease,
My only concern would be that if no such judiciary exists in a given nation, this act would essentially leave that person in legal limbo indefinitely and could even be abused as a method of escaping a murder charge by the more devious; claim it was reasonable force and, since there's no court to weigh the facts, you can't be touched until a judgement on your claim was made. Also, I do believe the phrase "comparable" was open to abuse by similarly devious persons; with a sufficiently good lawyer, one could easily argue for the literal definition of "comparable" and then simply argue that any use of force to protect one's self or others is justified because the level of force used can be compared to the smallest amount of force necessary.
Unless we have enough faith in people to assume the fairness of the judiciary (and, clearly, there are those that don't), my only thought is to mandate the creation of a court solely for ascertaining whether reasonable force was used which, even if other courts are not, must be unbiased and influenced only be credible evidence. However, perhaps I am overlooking a simpler and more elegant solution. As always suggestions are welcomed.
(OOC: It's amazing that in the UN days, it could simply be said "this thing is okay, don't punish people if they do it" and everyone would follow it and now we can spend pages and pages engaged in debate on wording.)