Freedom of conscience

[Imperium Anglorum]

The World Assembly hereby declares that within the jurisdiction of the World Assembly, there may not be enacted or enforced any law, policy, or regulation which shall impose any legal penalty or create any right of action against the holding of or belief in any thought.

Human rights: Significant.
Mobile.

---

FAQ

This is short!
Sure.

This ought not be significant!
Wrong.

This needs a preamble!
No.

[Kenmoria]

(OOC: The human rights category has been renamed to ‘civil rights’.)

“Support.”

[Araraukar]

OOC: Joke proposals go here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=255807

Given the general lack of reliable thought reading ability or machinery for the same purpose, the whole idea is unnecessary to begin with, or already covered by the current freedom of expression resolution.

[Kenmoria]

OOC: Joke proposals go here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=255807

(OOC: The last one wasn’t.)

[Losthaven]

The World Assembly hereby declares that within the jurisdiction of the World Assembly, there may not be enacted or enforced any law, policy, or regulation which shall impose any legal penalty or create any right of action against the holding or belief of any thought.

The idea of freedom of conscience is something Losthaven would support but could we please figure out a better (and more comprehensive way) to frame this.

[Imperium Anglorum]

Ara, vexatious legality challenges go elsewhere. You want to challenge it, go ahead, rack up the numbers; you're already first on the leaderboards.

Also, seriously? The number one RP-wanker is telling me that we can't ban something because it's not possible, even when the technology to do it already exists? I'm shocked, shocked, to find that reasonable nation theory is going on here.

[Imperium Anglorum]

The idea of freedom of conscience is something Losthaven would support but could we please figure out a better (and more comprehensive way) to frame this.

What do you recommend?

[Bananaaaaa]

The World Assembly hereby declares that within the jurisdiction of the World Assembly, there may not be enacted or enforced any law, policy, or regulation which shall impose any legal penalty or create any right of action against the holding or belief of any thought.

Human rights: Significant.
Mobile.

Greetings please expand and submit a proper format for your proposal.

[Imperium Anglorum]

GA 454, UN 9 (?, correct if mis-cited).

[Munkcestrian Republic]

Against, people should be free to think what they want.

[Imperium Anglorum]

Proposes requirement to have water
> Against, people have a right to water
> Pikachu face

[Blueflarst]

The World Assembly hereby declares that within the jurisdiction of the World Assembly, there may not be enacted or enforced any law, policy, or regulation which shall impose any legal penalty or create any right of action against the holding or belief of any thought.

Human rights: Significant.
Mobile.

Riddicously short and vague
opposition

[Imperium Anglorum]

Riddicously short and vague
opposition

The opposition is ridiculously short and vague, yes. If length really is your only objection, read some Aristophanes.

[Sciongrad]

Why is the length a problem, exactly...? Is this just one of those arbitrary community rules we sometimes like to enforce to make the game more exclusive? Is there actually any explanation for why being short is a point against a proposal?

[Bananaistan]

"The People's Republic of Bananaistan is opposed. Unenforceable laws are pointless."

OOC: I'm glad that IA is no longer Mister-My-Format-Is-The-Only-Acceptable-Format-And-I'll-Stomp-Anyone-Who-Dares-To-Bold-Or-Italicise-Any-Word but it's kinda funny that even this is about three times longer than it needs to be.

[Imperium Anglorum]

Legit is this a meme or something? I did make a joke once or twice saying that, but is there any proof that I have ever stomped anything for format violations? Do any of the WALL IFVs sayformat bad stomp plox? Any instances where I commented on a proposal thread saying my vote was due to poor formatting?

Also seriously, this isn't some kind of newfangled idea. Otherwise, get on the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and tell them to screw article 18.

[Munkcestrian Republic]

Proposes requirement to have water
> Against, people have a right to water
> Pikachu face

Oh

[Losthaven]

The idea of freedom of conscience is something Losthaven would support but could we please figure out a better (and more comprehensive way) to frame this.

What do you recommend?

Shrug...

Haven't thought about it much. For start, I generally prefer to vote on things that have a preamble explaining why I should give a damn, or what the problem is that needs to be addressed. I am not one of the folks who thinks all proposals must look similar and I'm rather impressed with your ability to pass a nifty (if short lived) one line resolution during my long absence from the game, but I don't support this writing style as a convention. Not on formatting principles, but rather because proposals written in this way are far too susceptible to interpretation (and misinterpretation) when so sparsely written.

Would this prohibit, for instance, charging attempted bank robbery where a person legally bought a high powered rifle, a ski mask, and a one-way ticket to Tahiti, and also documented in his journal that he had thoughts about robbing a bank?

Most legal traditions do criminalize thought to some degree. Attempt and conspiracy crimes are common examples (although often it is also necessary to prove the person performed some act, lawful or otherwise, which served to further the criminal thought). Nearly every crime has an accompanying mens rea or a guilty state of mind, such as an intent to cause injury, knowledge that a check is fraudulent, driving with reckless disregard to whether someone may be hurt. There are many civil causes of action with similar standards, intentional infliction of emotional distress comes immediately to mind.

Would this proposal pose a problem for those legal standards because they effectively prohibit thoughts of bank robbery, thoughts of beating up your coworkers, or thoughts of defauding your grandmother? I don't know. It's hard for me to really know where to begin debating the merits of this proposal because it's so sparse and general.

[Bananaistan]

Legit is this a meme or something? I did make a joke once or twice saying that, but is there any proof that I have ever stomped anything for format violations? Do any of the WALL IFVs sayformat bad stomp plox? Any instances where I commented on a proposal thread saying my vote was due to poor formatting?

Also seriously, this isn't some kind of newfangled idea. Otherwise, get on the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and tell them to screw article 18.

OOC: I'm sure I've seen you demand that people format their proposals in your preferred format more than once or twice.

Re: UN covenant ... NS =/= RL.

[Araraukar]

"The People's Republic of Bananaistan is opposed. Unenforceable laws are pointless."

OOC: ^This.

And IA, Legality Challenges aren't what you do when someone first posts a draft. They're what you do if there's no way to find any kind of agreement with the drafter and you are certain a rule has been broken. Or when it has already been submitted. Look through my challenges, point out any frivolously made ones. Go on, I'll wait.

And if this is any kind of serious proposal, then you'll indeed run into the "conspiracy to commit X" problem - whether it's murder or treason or whatever else - and whether that can still count as criminal. Or if someone confesses to therapist/priest/whatever, that they can't stop thinking of hurting someone or raping a child or whatever. Can the authorities do nothing?

[Bears Armed]

OOC
Expressing beliefs or thoughts is already covered in various ways by existing resolutions, which would have to be taken into consideration if this proposal is intended to cover expression.
If this proposal is not supposed to cover actually expressing the thoughts, rather than just holding or believing them, then the lack [that has already been pointed out] of any reliable way for most member nations' governments to tell what people really think or believe means that this would have little or no actual effects: 'Mild', at the most.

[Liberimery]

What do you recommend?

Shrug...

Haven't thought about it much. For start, I generally prefer to vote on things that have a preamble explaining why I should give a damn, or what the problem is that needs to be addressed. I am not one of the folks who thinks all proposals must look similar and I'm rather impressed with your ability to pass a nifty (if short lived) one line resolution during my long absence from the game, but I don't support this writing style as a convention. Not on formatting principles, but rather because proposals written in this way are far too susceptible to interpretation (and misinterpretation) when so sparsely written.

Would this prohibit, for instance, charging attempted bank robbery where a person legally bought a high powered rifle, a ski mask, and a one-way ticket to Tahiti, and also documented in his journal that he had thoughts about robbing a bank?

Most legal traditions do criminalize thought to some degree. Attempt and conspiracy crimes are common examples (although often it is also necessary to prove the person performed some act, lawful or otherwise, which served to further the criminal thought). Nearly every crime has an accompanying mens rea or a guilty state of mind, such as an intent to cause injury, knowledge that a check is fraudulent, driving with reckless disregard to whether someone may be hurt. There are many civil causes of action with similar standards, intentional infliction of emotional distress comes immediately to mind.

Would this proposal pose a problem for those legal standards because they effectively prohibit thoughts of bank robbery, thoughts of beating up your coworkers, or thoughts of defauding your grandmother? I don't know. It's hard for me to really know where to begin debating the merits of this proposal because it's so sparse and general.

Attempted crimes are typically not solely thinking about committing crime. Otherwise I’d be facing an unknown bu high number of attempt mass murder and attempted drunk driving offenses for playing GTA. Usually attempted crimes involve crimes that were thwarted and “pre-crimes” usually involve more evidence to show that you would have committed the crime but for being caught before you could succeed. Other times it’s that you did commit the crime but you’re a lousy criminal. If you stab someone with intent to kill, but they manage to survive, then it’s an attempted murder.

Many crimes do not require a guilty mind. Murder under common law systems requires a guilty mind only to establish the degree of the offense (1st, 2nd, Felony, and manslaughter) with only the first two determined by whether or not you were planning the murder and the latter two being applicable if someone dies as a direct result of a crime you committed but didn’t plan on anyone dying (the crime being either a felony or misdemeanor respectfully.).

[Imperium Anglorum]

OOC: I'm sure I've seen you demand that people format their proposals in your preferred format more than once or twice.

Really? And any situations where there is a proximate connection between an against vote and format? Because if you can pull that up, I'll happily shift my position from "I don't think that ever actually happened and the narrative that it did is slanderous" to "My apologies for holding such a position, I now disavow it".

Re: UN covenant ... NS =/= RL.

This is barely an argument: the assertion that NS isn't real life has no impact and no link. Clearly, there's some point at which it proves too much, what is it? The point where we pass laws guaranteeing sexual privacy? Because we have those in real life and oh, NS ≠ RL, so let's not pass any of those. Wielding this specific warrant is the same sort of philosophical inconsistency as old NatSov philosophy.

And IA, Legality Challenges aren't what you do when someone first posts a draft. They're what you do if there's no way to find any kind of agreement with the drafter and you are certain a rule has been broken. Or when it has already been submitted. Look through my challenges, point out any frivolously made ones. Go on, I'll wait.

And I'm telling you that if you want to argue that this violates the joke rule, you should (1) read the decision on the joke rule, it's somewhere in the spreadsheet I created, and (2) applying your own framework because I can already tell you there is not going to be any agreement between us on that topic.

And if this is any kind of serious proposal, then you'll indeed run into the "conspiracy to commit X" problem - whether it's murder or treason or whatever else - and whether that can still count as criminal. Or if someone confesses to therapist/priest/whatever, that they can't stop thinking of hurting someone or raping a child or whatever. Can the authorities do nothing?

Generally conspiracy, at least in the law to which I'm familiar, requires that "conspirators have a plan which calls for some conspirators to perpetrate the crime and others to provide support" Salinas v. United States, 522 US 52, 64 (1997). I mean sure, there are other legal traditions and if they penalise the state of holding a belief about the conspiracy, I'm disinclined to care because they could instead be penalising a far more connected sort of crime: the planning of a conspiracy.

Moreover, unless you also think mental health is a belief that one can just shake off like how people who aren't depressed tell depressed people to get over it and pull themselves up by the bootstraps, involuntary commitment laws when judiciously applied (obviously, Soviet Russia's commitment of political dissenters to asylums notwithstanding) are not penalising belief in as much as they are attempting to aid the ill. I'm also agnostic that such laws ought be involuntary given the resolution on legal competence.

Also, you can't defend the positions "what about laws which would be prohibited by this resolution, getting rid of them is bad" if you think the resolution itself is "unenforceable", those are mutually exclusive. If they are unenforceable, the negative impact of prohibiting those laws ought be zero. I'm not sure what your advocacy is other than "IA bad, proposal bad" but you may want to give it a rethink instead of knifing your arguments.

Edit: grammar

[Imperium Anglorum]

If this proposal is not supposed to cover actually expressing the thoughts, rather than just holding or believing them, then the lack [that has already been pointed out] of any reliable way for most member nations' governments to tell what people really think or believe means that this would have little or no actual effects: 'Mild', at the most.

What is your philosophy on the application of the strength rule? Is there a framework in which the breadth of what is being regulated maps to statistical impact?

[Pilipinas and Malaya]

The World Assembly hereby declares that within the jurisdiction of the World Assembly, there may not be enacted or enforced any law, policy, or regulation which shall impose any legal penalty or create any right of action against the holding or belief of any thought.

Human rights: Significant.
Mobile.

OOC: I honestly thought that this was a 1984 joke proposal from IA. My head feels so weird now. In all seriousness, shouldn’t this be covered already in another Civil Rights Proposal, or at least implied?

IC: Foreign Affairs Minister Sarah Tan has said that the nation of Pilipinas and Malaya opposes the idea, and recommends the creation of a larger resolution or charter covering other aspects of civil rights. In the same presscon, she has also announced that there will be a creation of a new bureau, the World Assembly Bureau.