Cabbages and Kings [Open, IC, MT,+, pos. PG-13 (additional)]

[Libraria and Ausitoria]

(Background)

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"The time has come," the Walrus said, "to talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings.”

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Of Cabbages, Kings, and Sovereignty Divine

(I.e., Can anyone tell me what's the collective noun for an unknown quantity of extremely tied-up and confused Ausitorian Empires?)

Wherefore the fleet-footed ships? Wherefore the waxing seal of majesty's divine rights? Wherefore the bag-laden cabs of borderless immigration? Wherefore the hottest mermaids from o'er the seas? Wherefore the sinful angels a-flight?

***

A request for International input relating to the hottest international legal issue:
Do Aestorians have to wear clothes?

And follow up:
Who in God’s name are these decadent Aestorians anyway?

And, inevitably:
How many Empires are they trying to run now?

***

Pax Prosperitas - Gloria in Maere

By Order of Their Imperial Majesty's Government

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From: The Whittan Office, The Aestorian Commonwealth
To: International Royal & Imperial Houses
Encryption: Publicly Announced

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Your Imperial Majesties, Majesties, dispensers of Imperial Governments, &c.

The Aestorian Commonwealth, which many of you know as the Ausitorian Empire, is more accurately and technically the Librarian and Ausitorian and Apraecian Empires, the Chattakang Alliance and United Empire, and thereby includes 2-4 further Empires and 1 Imperial Caliphate; the whole also in functional governmental union with 2 Regional Governments, 1 International Trade Zone, 3 Single Market - Supranational Confederacies & Alliances, and being partly run by a further government.

We wish to formalize the Confederated Commonwealths, Empires, & Associations, of which multiple organizations and persons function at an Imperial rank, under a single title of a rank above Emperor. This is necessary as there is currently considerable legal uncertainty over whether the Chattakang Empires can owe allegiance to the Ausitorian Emperor or indeed the Aestorian Commonwealth, an issue which is rendering it difficult for the Supreme Court to rule on the right to express sexuality.

We would therefore like to inquire into whether there is any consensus for titles above Imperial Majesty/Serene Maharajah/other equivalents. We have rejected, for reasons of politic, "Despot", "Dictator", or "Tyrant"; and we would also prefer to avoid religious connotations. We wonder whether the WA title "Delegate", or variations on it, perhaps “Hereditary Delegate” or “Heritdelegate”, might be rendered at such a rank.

We would also like to inquire into whether the elevation of the Commonwealth to such a rank would meet with approval by other Imperial Houses and Governments. It should be noted that the intention is to leave the throne permanently vacant and managed by Regents/Viceroys of the rank of Emperor.

I have the honour to remain,

RHT= P ^v7-3

His Serene Maharaja=Anax=Inquisitor, Pope=President=Princips=Palatine=Patriarch Richard VII "Hajim-Rik" Terforton=Pirnzak,
Whittan Secretary and Foreign Secretary, the Aestorian Commonwealth; (Acting) Delegate & Prime Minister of the Panessos Senate
&c, &c.

acting for

The Outer Commonwealth, &c.

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OOC PG-13 Warning:

Please note the central section of this post is probably PG-13. While there are no scenes per se, since the current Federation is in grave danger of falling to pieces over differences in opinion about reasonable public behaviour (due to the inevitable development of this blind-spot) mature public behaviour is discussed, although with a minimum of detail, from a legal, government, and sociological perspective. Further, since Ausitorian Lawyers like wordplay to make their reading less irredeemably boring, there is some mild innuendo.

However there is no violence, unless you count the head-splitting complexity of the Ausitorian government’s judicial systems. (Although if you do count that, this should be X-rated as “completely unsuitable for anyone without tertiary education or equivalent”).

Viewer caution is advised.

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The Legal Beagle

#Aestoria’s no. 1 Law Blawg.


Law

Needless to say, in non-Ausitorian countries this article may not be safe for work. Viewer discretion is advised, and in general youngsters should not bother reading this as the Ausitorian judicial system makes the average international court look like a nursery. It was also felt that including pictures with this article might be construed as illegal in some countries and therefore they have not been included. Those of us in more enlightened countries should use other sources as appropriate to compensate for this shortfall.

The smoking hot Edenite Saga continues to arouse shock and awe as it progresses through the legal system. The legal questions: is there a right to express sexuality in public? Is there a right to nudity? Does the government have any right to limit the choice of people without evidence-based justification? Is decadence meaningless? Does anything go?

The Circle of Life

There has long been a tradition of nudity and the free expression of sexuality, especially in less developed times and areas, but this has always been a matter of custom. In ancient Auxitoria, freed from the incidence of slavery and its association with nudity, and freed from Gemnasian conservatism, the quantity of clothing and barriers towards open displays of sexuality decreased steadily in the warm climate. The invasion of Librarians then led an even more marked decline in clothing of the fairer sex in an attempt to shock or seduce the Librarian invader, while Ausitorian men competed with the Librarians, in a game of chicken, to increase the clothing men commonly wore in the tropics. However the onset of Jevo hegemony resulted in increasing notions of solidarity with Libraria, and nudity and sexuality was rapidly confined to the Alexandrian caves, which were being cleared of reptiles and developed for mining - hence the slang “undergrounders”, “going jewelling”, and “serpent hunting”. This trend of increasing clothing in all parties was reversed with the collapse of the Jevo threat, and the Whittan adopted both the view that sexuality was an individual matter, and the view that a reduction in clothing was both an expression of free choice and a public gift in the nature of art, and that "anything is artistic in any circumstance where there can exist a reasonable expectation that the work will be admired by any person in a group of people without prejudice”, steering a path towards the latest in thin-fabric micro-togas, which at least saves Ausitoria from the need to import large quantities of textile products.

In the Chattakang system, meanwhile, debate had been raging between adherents of Islam, religious puritans, and customs of the peoples of the lands, and nudity and unusual sexual preferences ceased to be a matter of common public practice, although in some areas, especially the tropics, and in liberal Craterum, it hung on. The celebrated short-skirt Chiao clans of the Spiral, New Chattakang, and the Rajan Amraja also deserve special mention. Although in very few locations was nudity ever actually banned, the general persecution against both it and “sexual deviency” was marked, although greatly reduced in the last generation with progress in the developed nations.

An Imperial Cock-up

Then came the unification of Chattakang and Ausitoria, led by the governmental union of the United (Chattakang) Realms and the (Ausitorian) Home Realms and the federal government, which also directed various local states, including from the Chattakang Alliance Borethnia, Bvordsha (now independent), Austrailanor, Whinte, Pandi (now independent), Kroktopia, and the other Caliphates; which had the general right to make whatever additional legislation they liked, including in defence and foreign affairs, but excluding customs. Shortly Chattakang, especially the religious tropics, was awash with scantily-clad and highly promiscuous Ausitorians, who, in their Imperial disposition, not only did not care for the opinion of the locals, but actively sought to change it, starting by winning court battles to universally criminalize discrimination on the basis of nudity and sexuality. Local authorities pointed to customary laws against the fact of it, and defended the laws on the basis of their culture and independence, and in the case of nudity and public promiscuity managed to invalidate the argument of defence of free personal choice on the grounds that hygiene, although mitigatable for, might be an issue and therefore justified limitations. However this did not go down well with the tourist industry, who argued that, with the guarantee of any rights of any persons throughout the Commonwealth (and notionally anywhere else), tourists could not be bound by such provisions. Subsequently in August 2015 the Aestorian Supreme Court issued an opinion finding that since nudism by tourists might be expected in any populated location, and since everybody is a tourist somewhere, the right to nudity and freedom of sexual choice and expression “in itself” was therefore protected in all substantially public areas.

This beagle knows that love must be simpler than Ausitorian lawyers find it.

The Serene Caliphate of Kroktopia was the first to lead the counter-charge, the state court finding that their laws were defensible on the grounds that for hygenity, even “nudists” could reasonably be required to “wear clothes”; and also that for public order, people of non-traditional sexuality and immodest clothing should abide by a “don’t ask, don’t reveal” policy. However this line of defense started to fall apart at Chattakang System Alliance appeal in the face of the questions (i) was there a defence on the grounds that it was what in Aestoria would be called “a public work of artistic expression”? (ii) was not a universal right entitled to protection everywhere? (iii) where did universal jurisdiction stop and local interpretations start? And tied into the last question was the question of whether the “Aestorian” Commonwealth could indeed lay claim to having inherited jurisdiction over the Chattakang Alliance in the wake of the post-Bvordshkan and Ragine liberation - something which had always been assumed, and never questioned, but now started to look very shaky indeed, as its only basis was conquest, expedience, and laws which were anyway “equivalent”. Suddenly, with the equivalence in question, being in governmental union did not necessarily mean being in legal union.

Ill-conceived confusion

Promptly the transparent toga was rolled out on the markets, which seemed to offer a suitable freedom of expression with no hygeine concerns, a potential compromise. Then the issue became whether the freedom of artistic expression was absolute, and in February 2016 the Supreme Court held that "anything is artistic in any circumstance where there can exist a reasonable expectation that the work will be admired by any person in a group of people without prejudice", and found “it would normally be reasonable for areas to be free to elect to designate that their area should or should not be expected to approve”, “prejudice on sexual preferences excepted”, which immediately opened the flood-gates in liberal cities. Subsequently in March the Chattakang Circle Court decided the question of limitations hinged on whether it caused such disorder or actually caused such approval, and sent the issue back down to the Kroktopian government, who started to amass evidence, but internet pornographic companies stepped in, making submissions to the effect that the average Kroktopian was more liberal than their government pretended with regard to nudity, and would no doubt enjoy a more liberal attitude towards clothing. The Kroktopian Government therefore held a referendum in August, where the people only approved a ban on a “provocative lack of clothing” and “public sexual activity”, which was put into immediate effect.

However nudist activists immediately sought clarification about the legality of the ban from the Supreme Court, arguing “provocation” was unclear, and the Supreme Court promptly found that “even if it is not preferred, even nudity in itself is unlikely to cause actual public disorder, is not disorderly in itself, and is not sufficient grounds for disorder either”. They also found it would constitute discrimination if arousal or personal preference was taken into consideration when determining whether provocation had occurred. This part of the law was therefore struck out. Nonetheless, the Court found “public sexual activity” was “likely another matter in Kroktopia at the present point in time”, and therefore Kroktopia’s “designation of disapproval” was justified “on the basis of current evidence”. Kroktopia, acting with unusual speed, submitted that, without commenting on the admissibility of the ruling, there was further evidence public disorder was likely until the matter had been put to vote in Parliament, which the Supreme Court accepted, although the Speaker noted that the Commonwealth was likely to take the view that only “public sexual activity” could be banned locally. This proved to be the case in a September vote, although, in view of the continuing evolution of court findings and ensuing controversy, the vote also allowed for “continued other public expression limitations regarding the display of sexuality in the interests of transitional order” for a 2-year transition period. Parliament also noted that even where public sexual activity had not been banned, antisocial behaviour, sound pollution, blocking rights of way, and littering, incitement to criminal acts, and non-artistic graffiti & pollution were all prohibited under the Public Disorder Acts of 344 and 398, and that local governments should implement such legislation to ensure that public sex did not become disruptive. By this point public nudity was not uncommon throughout the Home Realms and large swathes of the Chattakang Realms.

Subsequently in October, a group of nudist activists called “Edenites” in Alexandria announced their intention to hold a meeting in the centre of Kegmet City, a new city being built by the Commonwealth around the Kegmet canal, which had banned public sexual activity. The legal status of Kegmet is complicated: it may be considered to fall within the Marlylbet Empire, but has home rule; however, it has declared independence, and the Marlylbet Empire may not exist, however, it may fall within the Amrajan Empire, or the Kingdom of Saphoitra, and/or it may have been annexed directly by the Aestorian Empire as part of the Ausitorian Empire. However the Kegmet Court, which naturally thought of Kegmet as an independent state within the Federation, agreed to hear whether the nudist activitists could bring an injunction against their arrest, and, in February 2017, refused the requests on the grounds of public disorder, i.e. designation of disapproval. The Chattakang Court, although unsure of its jurisdiction, accepted the appeal, and promptly ruled that, it being a new city, and a Marlylbet one, there was an expectation of liberalism, and that the election to be designated as a conservative area had been made at the wrong level, although they did not signify whether it should have been made more locally or in Marlylbet. Kegmet therefore appealed to the Supreme Court, which upheld the decision.

Simultaneously, however, Kroktopia et al (including Kegmet, Qaphage, Pollia, Meurigia, Whinte, Borethnia, Austrailanor, Chanma, the Seven Emirates, and the Three Caliphates) had brought an injunction against the Aestorian Commonwealth’s jurisdiction - this time, to the Decis Regional Court, which, although the Panessos Regional Court might have had a better claim on the basis of geography, was ready to accept the case on the grounds that all the parties were members of the Decis Confederacy. However, in view of the extraordinary complexity, they insisted that the matter first be heard by the relevant court - the Aestorian Supreme Court, which would have to argue about the nature of its own jurisdiction.

The Supreme Court rapidly agreed, first, that it could claim Universal Jurisdiction via the “right of the Aestorian Commonwealth to enforce whatever rights it can”, and second, that tourists could claim the protection of Ausitorian rights, and third, that so could the locals. The question of how exactly the Supreme Court could claim direct binding jurisdiction, however, was the difficult one, and in May the Supreme Court referred the question to Parliament, who, in June, referred it to the Whittan Council, who, in September, referred it to the Government for further consultations.

It is clear that the Government is sufficiently worried that they have taken to using a new flag combining the Aestorian & Chattakang flags, and giving Prince Kazpia, President of the International Commonwealth Agency, Imperial rank.

Confused? Yes, us too.

A New Birth?

The following legal solutions have been proposed, in order:

(1) The question depends upon Imperial Jurisdiction, i.e., whether the Commonwealth, and its participating states, has decided to have a unitary legal system. Since it has one, i.e. Aestoria, it would therefore seem that those states that did not wish to be part of it should leave that system, which is what distinguishes the Jurisdiction in law. This is understood to be the preferred position of the Liberal Party.
(2) It is always possible that a unitary system of government may have autonomous elements within it; and these elements are clearly self-determined in different directions, and therefore in fact the Chattakang jurisdiction is independent. This is understood to be the preferred position of the claimants.
(3) We are free to choose what legal system(s) we want to use. This is understood to be the preferred position of the Labour Party.
(4) The Chattakang System is bound by the Aestorian Constitution. This is understood to be the preferred position of the Government.
(5) The Chattakang System is bound by natural rights (hypothetically, the same as above). This is understood to be the preferred position of the Chattakang Court.
(6) The Aestorian Commonwealth has jurisdiction wherever it chooses and however it chooses to exercise it. This is understood to be the preferred position of the Whittan Council.
(7) With appropriate drafting, it should be possible for the Chattakang System to think of itself as an independent legal system and for the Aestorian Commonwealth to think of it as dependent. This is understood to be the preferred position of the Supreme Court.
(8) The question is completely irrelevant and should instead be settled by a new General Bill of Rights which allows for limitations on freedom of expression wherever it is locally offensive for any reason. This is understood to be the preferred position of the Conservative Party.

It is understood that the Cabinet is currently considering continuing with (2)-(8), whereby the governmental union extends irrespective of jurisdiction or local law; interestingly this excludes the option most favoured by the ruling party. However it does raise issues of regulatory equivalence and potential divergence.

The further difficulty with that would be for the government to arrange provisions for a multi-jurisdictional government, which will require something above even an Empire...

...And in any event, it is going to require some redrawing of borders...

Comments below?

Comments

Ausibeagle wrote: Oh god... [note to subs, we need a facepalm emoji for comments].

Kazpia4Prezident wrote: Why are we making the Commonwealth even more confusing? I know most Ausitorians have master's, but jeez this is getting complicated, and how will the immigrants cope?

Snoopdawg wrote: This is in essence a political problem not a legal one: the lawyers have found this can't go on.

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Decidog wrote: It probably will.

[OOC: I would like to acknowledge my inspiration from the legal blog ipkat.]

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New Whittington
New Emirate
The Caliphate of the Seven Emirates
The Chattakang Commonwealth
Panessos

“...On the twelth day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
twelve inner states, eleven going out, ten percent migrants, nine final courts, eight layers of gov’rnment, seven heads of state, six jurisdictions, five space-based rings;
four trading blocks, three common markets, two diverging regions, and a country which is non-unit’ry…”

His Serene Maharaja=Anax=Inquisitor, Pope=President=Princips=Palatine=Patriarch Richard VII "Hajim-Rik" Terforton=Pirnzak, Whittan Secretary and Foreign Secretary, the Aestorian Commonwealth; (Acting) Delegate & Prime Minister of the Panessos Senate, &c, &c., smiled ruefully from the ornate glass wall at the strains of carolers who were singing in the busy boulevard below. In the tropical city of the straights, the temperature had plunged to the shocking lows of 9 degrees Celsius, and one might have hoped that this would have put a stop to all the nudist controversy. And so it had, strictly speaking, for everyone was wearing clothes to keep warm - immodest clothes perhaps, but clothes nonetheless. But that did not suffice to stop them singing about it.

And they had a point. Who would have thought it would be on the trivial issue of nudity and sexuality where the Commonwealth would finally face the prospect of a catastrophic split? Nowadays international trade was in questionable fashion, gender politics and religion continuing their long-running skirmish, immigration was running so high and putting such a strain on services and job creation that even the liberals where looking forward to it declining in a few years when most of the landless refugees and leftover slaves had been hoovered out of the backstreets of the world where they had been so callously left to rot… but was this the straw that broke Ausitoria’s back?

“Why didn’t we see this coming?” he asked the party chairman behind him. With hindsight, it had all been obvious: it was the only thing in the liberal agenda “let nothing be forbidden if you cannot think why” that nobody had thought about, that nobody had planned for, that nobody had thought to map out the pitfalls and lay out a safe road through the minefield. And now it was the biggest domestic crisis since hyperinflation; thank god it didn’t (yet) spill over into economics.

“Well, it’s this new generation,” replied the Chairman. “They’re even more ostentatiously liberal than we are! Those bloody Edenists! I don’t care what they do in the privacy of their bedrooms, but only the other day…”

“Yes, they can seem a bit provocative,” cut in the Foreign Secretary, who, like many great thinkers, thought of sexuality as a distraction for the weak-willed - trivial fun, yes, and trivial fun was justifiable, as the white rabbit made eminently clear in the archetypal Ausitorian play “The Importance of Trivia”, but it was also definitely a distraction. And the Commonwealth was led by great thinkers, i.e., people of very much a similar type, even if outwardly diverse, i.e., they were not inclined to get involved in anything they didn't think to be important. Hence they were all in this mess, and this very city, a city which had been mostly glorious sketches in an architect's notebook a mere five giddy years ago, was in danger of finding itself on the wrong side of some irritating jurisdictional border. And the jurisdictional border of one day is an international border the next, and that simply would not do; what would the shareholders in the international companies think?

Here, the localists were ever present: go past the modern, shiny veneer of the futuristic skyscrapers; and you saw the jumbled sloped rooves, and heard the local dialects. Go past the international food outlets and you saw the street food; pineapple buns, duck tongues, glutinous rice-balls (and the Foreign Secretary was very partial to them all). The old-fashioned junks, the new-fangled junks were on the water, the airships and the tethered billboards shared the sky overhead; the cacophany and fusion of music was all around. This was the modern Commonwealth: the slow, creeping merger of the imperial nobility of first-world Ausitoria with the confused buzz of Chattakang and the rest of the world. But while in five years you might start the process of welding nations together, it was not long enough to complete it, and it was certainly not long enough for the conservative reactionaries who called liberalism ‘decadent” to get used to it. They saw sexuality as a distraction too, which meant there was some common ground with the Ausitorian elite, but they could not get over it, which meant that there might not be enough. And the dividing line here between liberals and conservatives was just around the city outskirts, and the Foreign Secretary’s mind was suddenly filled with dystopian visions of border walls running around the edge of the shining city and bleak barren mountain ranges around. Or perhaps it would be a crumbling city inside and some monstrous fascist dictatorship gathering hordes on the outside. Either way, it was a terrible vision for everyone on either side of the wall. He turned back to the chairman.

“Anyway, can you think of any other unexpected “decadent” things we might do which could worsen the divisions?” he asked, turning around and walking over to the ornate table.

“Invading more foreign countries?”

The Foreign Secretary winced, still remembering Ausitoria’s streak of take-everything-to-the-brink-to-try-to-make-the-world-better initiatives, and then recovered. “Yes, we already know that one is a problem area, so we’re more restrained these days. And we also know there’s rising discontent from the rising cost of living due to the immigration, and we all know that’ll tail off by next election. And then we’re all generally unpopular for globalization putting the poor idiot out of work, so we’re focusing on career development. But what I want to know is, what’s the next dividing line going to be?”

“God?”

“Oh god no, heaven forbid,” replied the Foreign Secretary, with a slight irony, and then he reached down and made a note in his notebook. “I suppose it’s possible, all these religious conservatives about. I shall have to consult with reference to New Edom. If you want the advice of a religious nation with its nonexistent knickers in a twist there’s none finer. Anything else?”

“Making undemocratic decisions?”

“Urgh. Yes, we elites know best. I suppose you’re thinking of the latest cryptochain internet democracy ideas seeping in, and there’s always the danger of some unexpected revolution.” He sat down and scribbled a few notes. “Anything else?”

“...can’t think of anything, sorry…” said the chairman.

“Well, keep asking around here for me,” replied the turqoise secretary, nodding. “Bah humbug, expect the unexpected,” he added, more to himself than the experienced chairman sitting on the other side of the desk. “It’s difficult enough to predict the probable. What a tangled web we weave. How much further can we go on like this?”

“Well, if we can share the wealth, with incomes rising forever, to decadence, and beyond?” asked the party chairman, understanding perfectly.

“Yes we can. To decadence and beyond,” replied the Foreign Secretary, raising his cocktail and sipping with a wry, furtive, smile.

“Although at this rate it might take us some time to get there…” he added, making for the door.