[Draft] Raising Legal Awareness

[Sancta Romana Ecclesia]

Raising Legal Awareness

Category: Education and Creativity || Area of Effect: Educational
A resolution to promote funding and the development of education and the arts.

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The General Assembly,

Understanding the importance of legal awareness - the level of knowledge that citizens have about the legal system of their nation,

Noting the many benefits of high legal awareness, including the increased transparency of a nation’s judicial system, greater citizens’ involvement in the lawmaking process, and an added safeguard to the nation’s rule of law,

Finding that while this Assembly has passed many resolutions aimed at ensuring that the national laws are fair, the Assembly’s legislation on the topic of legal awareness is scarce,

Believing that passing this resolution will fulfill the need for such legislation, this Assembly hereby:

I. Mandates that all member-nations of the World Assembly must:

1. create a national, publicly accessible official journal, where all of the nation’s future legislation must be published before entering into force;
2. provide the official journal to the nation’s interested citizens, free of charge, to comply with its public accessibility requirement;
3. require all projects of national legislation, officially considered by the nation’s legislative power, to be publicly accessible, alongside their supplementary explanation, detailing at the minimum:
   
   1. the problem that the project of legislation seeks to address,
   2. why the addressed problem cannot be resolved via non-legislative means,
   3. the current state of regulation on the covered issues, including any applicable World Assembly law,
   4. an opinion on its compliance with the World Assembly law, if the project of legislation touches a matter covered by it,
   5. the effects of passing the project as legislation, including any foreseeable financial costs that would arise from it and the means to cover them;
4. issue official guidelines to the national legislators, to ensure that the national law and lawmaking practices are compliant with World Assembly law, as well as readable to the highest possible extent and free from direct but unintended effects;
5. produce educational programs and materials popularizing the topics of general theory, history, and philosophy of law;

II. Charges the World Humanities Fund (WHF) to:

1. monitor and report on the levels of legal awareness in the member-nations;
2. recommend educational materials produced by the member-nations for publication in the Universal Library, based on their effectiveness at increasing legal awareness as well as international importance;
3. grant World Assembly funding and support to non-governmental programs that would improve popular or specialist knowledge on the matters of national and World Assembly law, including precedents and customary law;
4. establish objective criteria for granting or denying these funds and support, based on projected quality of education provided by the program, its reach, and the program's value for money;

III. Directs the Universal Library Coalition to publish all educational materials recommended by the WHF and all World Assembly law, including the resolutions no longer in force.

This is the promised substantial re-draft of a defeated resolution of my authorship, Requiring Promulgation of National Laws. The recent passing of Public Access to Court Records made me work on this again, since it deals, in my mind, with a similar issue (only it's about the transparency of the court system, not legislative). I've decided to come at this topic from a different angle and this is how the category changed. All sections that were source of no small controversy last time were removed.

And now... I'm open to your comments.

OOC: Big thanks to Karma's WA department and its leader - Takura, for the help with polishing this. I hope the category is correct, since it mostly deals with knowledge people have about the law, I believe that Educational AoE is justified.

The General Assembly,

Understanding the importance of legal awareness - the level of knowledge that citizens have about the legal system of their nation,

Noting the many benefits of high legal awareness, including the increased transparency of a nation’s judicial system, greater citizens’ involvement in the lawmaking process, and an added safeguard to the nation’s rule of law,

Finding that while this Assembly has passed many resolutions aimed at ensuring that the national laws are fair, the Assembly’s legislation on the topic of legal awareness is scarce,

Believing that passing this resolution will fulfill the need for such legislation, this Assembly hereby:

I. Mandates that all member-nations of the World Assembly must:

1. create a national, publicly accessible official journal, where all of the nation’s future legislation must be published before entering into force;
2. provide the official journal to the nation’s interested citizens, free of charge, to comply with its public accessibility requirement;
3. prohibit future using of past decisions as legally binding precedent, if the reasoning for reaching them is not publicly available;
4. require all projects of national legislation, officially considered by the nation’s legislative power, to be publicly accessible, alongside their supplementary explanation, detailing at the minimum:
   
   1. the problem that the project of legislation seeks to address,
   2. why the addressed problem cannot be resolved via non-legislative means,
   3. the current state of regulation on the covered issues, including any applicable World Assembly law,
   4. an opinion on its compliance with the World Assembly law, if the project of legislation touches a matter covered by it,
   5. the effects of passing the project as legislation, including any potential financial costs that would arise from it and the means to cover them;
5. issue official guidelines to the national legislators, to ensure that the national law and lawmaking practices are compliant with World Assembly law, as well as readable to the highest possible extent and free from unintended effects;

II. Creates the Legal Education Committee (LEC) and charges it to:

1. produce educational programs and materials popularizing the topics of general theory, history, and philosophy of law;
2. monitor and report on the levels of legal awareness in the member-nations;
3. grant World Assembly funding and support to programs that would improve popular or specialist knowledge on the matters of national and World Assembly law, including precedents and customary law;
4. establish objective criteria for granting or denying the funds and support, based on projected quality of education provided by the program, its reach, and the project's value for money;
5. grant the necessary World Assembly funding and support to the member-nations that are documented to lack the resources needed to comply with the mandates imposed upon them by this resolution;

III. Directs the appropriate World Assembly organs to publish all World Assembly law, including the resolutions no longer in force, as well as any educational materials produced by LEC, in the Universal Library.

The General Assembly,

Understanding the importance of legal awareness - the level of knowledge that citizens have about the legal system of their nation,

Noting the many benefits of high legal awareness, including the increased transparency of a nation’s judicial system, greater citizens’ involvement in the lawmaking process, and an added safeguard to the nation’s rule of law,

Finding that while this Assembly has passed many resolutions aimed at ensuring that the national laws are fair, the Assembly’s legislation on the topic of legal awareness is scarce,

Believing that passing this resolution will fulfill the need for such legislation, this Assembly hereby:

I. Mandates that all member-nations of the World Assembly must:

1. create a national, publicly accessible official journal, where all of the nation’s future legislation must be published before entering into force;
2. provide the official journal to the nation’s interested citizens, free of charge, to comply with its public accessibility requirement;
3. prohibit future using of past decisions as legally binding precedent, if the reasoning for reaching them is not publicly available;
4. require all projects of national legislation, officially considered by the nation’s legislative power, to be publicly accessible, alongside their supplementary explanation, detailing at the minimum:
   
   1. the problem that the project of legislation seeks to address,
   2. why the addressed problem cannot be resolved via non-legislative means,
   3. the current state of regulation on the covered issues, including any applicable World Assembly law,
   4. an opinion on its compliance with the World Assembly law, if the project of legislation touches a matter covered by it,
   5. the effects of passing the project as legislation, including any potential financial costs that would arise from it and the means to cover them;
5. issue official guidelines to the national legislators, to ensure that the national law and lawmaking practices are compliant with World Assembly law, as well as readable to the highest possible extent and free from unintended effects;

II. Creates the Legal Education Committee (LEC) and charges it to:

1. produce educational programs and materials popularizing the topics of general theory, history, and philosophy of law;
2. monitor and report on the levels of legal awareness in the member-nations;
3. grant World Assembly funding and support to programs that would improve popular or specialist knowledge on the matters of national and World Assembly law, including precedents and customary law;
4. establish objective criteria for granting or denying the funds and support, based on projected quality of education provided by the program, its reach, and the project's value for money;

III. Directs the appropriate World Assembly organs to publish all World Assembly law, including the resolutions no longer in force, as well as any educational materials produced by LEC, in the Universal Library.

The General Assembly,

Understanding the importance of legal awareness - the level of knowledge that citizens have about the legal system of their nation,

Noting the many benefits of high legal awareness, including the increased transparency of a nation’s judicial system, greater citizens’ involvement in the lawmaking process, and an added safeguard to the nation’s rule of law,

Finding that while this Assembly has passed many resolutions aimed at ensuring that the national laws are fair, the Assembly’s legislation on the topic of legal awareness is scarce,

Believing that passing this resolution will fulfill the need for such legislation, this Assembly hereby:

I. Mandates that all member-nations of the World Assembly must:

1. create a national, publicly accessible official journal, where all of the nation’s future legislation must be published before entering into force;
2. provide the official journal to the nation’s interested citizens, free of charge, to comply with its public accessibility requirement;
3. prohibit future using of past decisions as legally binding precedent, if the reasoning for reaching them is not publicly available;
4. require all projects of national legislation, officially considered by the nation’s legislative power, to be publicly accessible, alongside their supplementary explanation, detailing at the minimum:
   
   1. the problem that the project of legislation seeks to address,
   2. why the addressed problem cannot be resolved via non-legislative means,
   3. the current state of regulation on the covered issues, including any applicable World Assembly law,
   4. an opinion on its compliance with the World Assembly law, if the project of legislation touches a matter covered by it,
   5. the effects of passing the project as legislation, including any foreseeable financial costs that would arise from it and the means to cover them;
5. issue official guidelines to the national legislators, to ensure that the national law and lawmaking practices are compliant with World Assembly law, as well as readable to the highest possible extent and free from direct but unintended effects;
6. produce educational programs and materials popularizing the topics of general theory, history, and philosophy of law;

II. Charges the World Humanities Fund (WHF) to:

1. monitor and report on the levels of legal awareness in the member-nations;
2. recommend educational materials produced by the member-nations for publication in the Universal Library, based on their effectiveness at increasing legal awareness as well as international importance;
3. grant World Assembly funding and support to non-governmental programs that would improve popular or specialist knowledge on the matters of national and World Assembly law, including precedents and customary law;
4. establish objective criteria for granting or denying these funds and support, based on projected quality of education provided by the program, its reach, and the program's value for money;

III. Directs the Universal Library Coalition to publish all educational materials recommended by the WHF and all World Assembly law, including the resolutions no longer in force.

[Tinhampton]

Continued support. I was going to ask you about this today... and then

[Sancta Romana Ecclesia]

Continued support. I was going to ask you about this today... and then

Thanks! I actually like this better than my original idea and I hope people do too, otherwise this will be also... unpromulgated...

[Pope Saint Peter the Apostle]

I(3): prohibit future using of past decisions as legally binding precedent, if the reasoning for reaching them is not publicly available;

OOC: So, countries that currently do not record their reasoning for reaching decisions are... left without precedent?

[Sancta Romana Ecclesia]

I(3): prohibit future using of past decisions as legally binding precedent, if the reasoning for reaching them is not publicly available;

OOC: So, countries that currently do not record their reasoning for reaching decisions are... left without precedent?

OOC: It only means that the past decision cannot be the sole reason for a future one, if it's not known why it was even made in the first place. If the reasoning is unavailable that past decision can still be recalled to support a conclusion in the case, just as one of the arguments and not the one sealing the deal (so as non-binding, persuasive precedent rather than binding precedent).

I will axe this clause if it makes problems.

[Araraukar]

OOC and IC as marked.

Understanding the importance of legal awareness - the level of knowledge that citizens have about the legal system of their nation,

IC: "And exactly why do you think that "legal system" and "laws" are synonyms?"

Noting the many benefits of high legal awareness, including the increased transparency of a nation’s judicial system,

IC: "Which is part of the legal system, but does not involve new laws coming out, since a law cannot be used to make a judgement on, before it is a law."

greater citizens’ involvement in the lawmaking process

IC: "And that works exactly how in a dictatorship or absolute monarchy or somesuch thing that does not require input from the citizenry?"

and an added safeguard to the nation’s rule of law

OOC: The "rule of law" get thrown about so much that it's basically lost all meaning. Could you OOCly open up a bit exactly what you mean with it here?

Finding that while this Assembly has passed many resolutions aimed at ensuring that the national laws are fair, the Assembly’s legislation on the topic of legal awareness is scarce,

IC: "You do realize this is an actual falsehood and that nations are already required to make laws available for everyone, and treat everyone equally before the law?"

OOC: Didn't we just pass a resolution to that effect? Or did it not pass? I haven't checked.

Believing that passing this resolution will fulfill the need for such legislation,

IC: "Need for what legislation? I thought your problem was awareness of legislation? You can't mandate awareness anymore you can mandate people to stay awake."

create a national, publicly accessible official journal, where all of the nation’s future legislation must be published before entering into force;

IC: "'Journal'? What, like a magazine? What century do you live in, ambasador? Wouldn't a website be much more accessible?"

OOC: Araraukar is a bit behind on smartphone tech to RL, but otherwise just as connected as First World big cities.

provide the official journal to the nation’s interested citizens, free of charge, to comply with its public accessibility requirement;

IC: "Have you heard of these things called "public libraries"?"

prohibit future using of past decisions as legally binding precedent, if the reasoning for reaching them is not publicly available;

OOC: Past decisions of what? Past laws? Court judgements? What if the judgements were made hundreds of years ago, and reasonings were not written down? Or what if the records containing the reasoning have been lost in, say, a natural disaster, fire or war? Why is well-established precedent bad?

require all projects of national legislation, officially considered by the nation’s legislative power, to be publicly accessible, alongside their supplementary explanation, detailing at the minimum:

IC: "'Projects' and 'considered'? Also, have you ever heard of such a thing as national security? Some matters are too sensitive to be posted all over the internet or libraries when they are only considered. If we erased anonymity of suggestion boxes, then your utopia might be achieved, but that would quite negate the point of anonymity in the first place. I thought you wanted more involvement from people, not less."

the problem that the project of legislation seeks to address,

IC: "Pray, tell, what problem does the constitution of a nation seek to address?"

why the addressed problem cannot be resolved via non-legislative means,

IC: "I would very much like you to answer this question yourself, as per this proposal."

the current state of regulation on the covered issues, including any applicable World Assembly law,

IC: "So, "none" is going to be the answer a lot of the time, when it's not about amendments. Exactly how is that going to be helpful?"

an opinion on its compliance with the World Assembly law, if the project of legislation touches a matter covered by it,

IC: "Is this a trick question? Or, rather, a joke statement? Do you not know what compliance means? Why would a nation specifically create a law that's going to cause problems with the World Assembly? Remember you're not talking about existing ones but future ones, here."

OOC: Also, if the general NS playerbase can be used as an analogue, the general population of WA nations is likely going to know absolutely nothing of WA law, no matter how available it was made to them.

the effects of passing the project as legislation, including any potential financial costs that would arise from it and the means to cover them;

IC: "Okay, now I know you're just writing this for a laugh. First of all, future laws are not "projects" some school kids put together for their own amusement. Secondly, "any potential costs"? Are you trying to require omniscience from nations' lawmakers? Societies are complicated, people are even more complicated. If a law makes fur farming more costly because of animal welfare needs, and that makes fur items more costly, and people decide that fur is pointless anyway, and stop buying fur products, and fur animal farmers go out of business as a result, and end up needing unemployment welfare payments, and their children need to drop out of an expensive private school, and thus need to go to a public school that's further away and thus need to buy bus passes - are those children's bus passes required to be listed as potential costs in this journal of yours? Thirdly, in the above example, why should the nation care about what happens to the fur farmer's business, if the point of the law was production animal welfare?"

issue official guidelines to the national legislators, to ensure that the national law and lawmaking practices are compliant with World Assembly law, as well as readable to the highest possible extent and free from unintended effects;

IC: "I hope you realize you're mandating the national legislators issue official guidelines to themselves, here? And does "make sure it doesn't contradict the letter of the WA law, dummy" work? What does "readable" mean, here? I am not into obsessing over economists' jargon, so quite a few of the proposals and resolutions around here would already fail your requirement. As for unintended effects, see the above example of a fur farmer. Unintended effects are a fact of life. Every choice you make has unintended effects. You might as well try to mandate that people are to be free from the effects of gravity."

II. Creates the Legal Education Committee (LEC) and charges it to:

OOC: Are you 100% certain that there isn't a pre-existing committee you could use?

produce educational programs and materials popularizing the topics of general theory, history, and philosophy of law;

IC: "Why is this something you're making the committee do, instead of the nation? Although, again, what does "popularizing" mean? You can't force a topic to become popular, and often trying to push forth something so boring - to the general public - as law-making bureaucracy, will have the opposite of the intended effect."

monitor and report on the levels of legal awareness in the member-nations;

IC: "Monitor how? Report to who? Itself?"

grant World Assembly funding and support to programs that would improve popular or specialist knowledge on the matters of national and World Assembly law, including precedents and customary law;

IC: "So you're saying to use WA money to pay the salaries of all the WA ambassadors and their expenses, in here? Do be aware that some of the Strangers' Bar tabs can have astronomical sums on them, I've been told. Why is this a good idea?"

OOC: Realistically in most WA nations, the WA ambssadors and their staff would be the main target for such funding.

establish objective criteria for granting or denying the funds and support, based on projected quality of education provided by the program, its reach, and the project's value for money;

OOC: Is this an attempt to shoehorne this into the category/AoE? Because I honestly can't see how you're raising national spending on education, if you're making the committee use WA money on it. You could likely make a case for Political Stability or Furtherment of Democracy, both, depending on your angle.

grant the necessary World Assembly funding and support to the member-nations that are documented to lack the resources needed to comply with the mandates imposed upon them by this resolution;

IC: "This I know you have copied off of another proposal. But aren't you repeating yourself here?"

OOC: I don't think this clause should be here. Not just because I detest randomly shoring up weak member nations' economies at the expense of the stronger ones', but also because it's going to start a bad circular effect and cause thing; if the only way they'll avoid having to pay for WA frivolities is for being unable to pay for them, then there's little to no interest on the nation's part to get better at being a nation. You have done fairly well in terms of leaving things vague (except the "journal" part) enough to work in various systems, so just mandate nations get it done, and leave it up to them how they do it. This isn't a life-and-death thing so nations that may need to prioritize the not-supported-by-WA mandates of, say, making sure their citizens have homes and basic amenities and services, which CAN be life-and-death things, will certainly get the Wine And Crouton Conference's understanding on why they haven't yet complied with this, if it came to that.

III. Directs the appropriate World Assembly organs to publish all World Assembly law, including the resolutions no longer in force, as well as any educational materials produced by LEC, in the Universal Library.

OOC: I don't think the WA has "organs", the way a RL organization of similar nature would have. It pretty much has the committees made up in resolutions, and that's it. So a you're creating a commmittee, use that and require them to be stored in the library (rather than... be published in it? that sounds wrong). Also, this is the WA directing the WA to do stuff with WA stuff, so not entirely certain how that's helpful at all? Unless it was meant to be the joke finisher on a bureaucratic nonsense that on the surface appears to be aimed at reducing the bureaucractic nonsense? (See the pic linked to the word "nature" above.)

I don't entirely see the point of this whole thing to begin with. What's the problem you're trying to tackle? People's apathy about laws in a massive multiplayer multinational bureaucratic organization whose lawmaking they have no way to affect? Or are you assuming that all WA citizens are as apathetic about their own national laws as you/your family/your friend/your neighbour/your neighbour's dogs are? In RL most people go through life just fine, being perfectly law-abiding citizens, without being completely aware of what laws are talked about, if they don't affect them directly, or even of most of the laws in existence in their nation. I don't need to know the laws and regulations about licence-limited laboratory reagents, unless I work in a lab that needs to order the reagents, and most people don't. (Our lab tech school's lab reagents locker had a specific "dangerous substances" locked cupboard. Interestingly the uranium salt was not in it, until we pointed it out to the teacher. The plastic bottle it was in, had the most impressive collection of warnings on it that I've personally ever seen on a container. Though honestly the slivers of pure natrium were probably a lot more dangerous.)

The point of the committee also seems hazy. Why is it needed? Beyond the funding (which is a bad idea to begin with, as explained above), it seems unnecessary, given the one real task it does should be done by the nations to begin with.

P.S. There may be typos, didn't have time to comb through other than coding typos.

[Sancta Romana Ecclesia]

OOC: I will address your chief points later, for now I think I will remove II.5 (WA funding for poor nations to comply), as this isn't really needed here. Thanks for pointing that one out.

[Sancta Romana Ecclesia]

Okay, a new draft is up! I've taken into account some changes suggested here. And now, for my reply to Araraukar:

IC: "And exactly why do you think that "legal system" and "laws" are synonyms?"

They are not, why do you think I'm using them synonymously? "Nation's legal system" is a broader term than "nation's laws", as besides the laws, it also includes the practice applying said laws.

greater citizens’ involvement in the lawmaking process

IC: "And that works exactly how in a dictatorship or absolute monarchy or somesuch thing that does not require input from the citizenry?"

While people may not be involved directly with the process everywhere, citizens are still more informed about it (and thus more involved) if projects of national legislation are publicly available.

and an added safeguard to the nation’s rule of law

OOC: The "rule of law" get thrown about so much that it's basically lost all meaning. Could you OOCly open up a bit exactly what you mean with it here?

OOC: Here it means government obeying the letter of law. If citizens have a greater awareness of what their legal system is, they will be able to at least recognize when their gov does something it shouldn't do according to the law, and hopefully do something about it (e.g. change the government in an election, if the nation is a democracy).

Finding that while this Assembly has passed many resolutions aimed at ensuring that the national laws are fair, the Assembly’s legislation on the topic of legal awareness is scarce,

IC: "You do realize this is an actual falsehood and that nations are already required to make laws available for everyone, and treat everyone equally before the law?"

OOC: Didn't we just pass a resolution to that effect? Or did it not pass? I haven't checked.

There exists a resolution calling for non-discrimination (Charter of Civil Rights) and in that way also for equality before the law. There is also GAR#322: No Penalty Without Law which dictates that criminal law must be published, but it doesn't say it for universally all laws. At least those are the resolutions I'm aware of.

Believing that passing this resolution will fulfill the need for such legislation,

IC: "Need for what legislation? I thought your problem was awareness of legislation? You can't mandate awareness anymore you can mandate people to stay awake."

You can't mandate awareness that is true, but you can make policies incentivizing it.

create a national, publicly accessible official journal, where all of the nation’s future legislation must be published before entering into force;

IC: "'Journal'? What, like a magazine? What century do you live in, ambasador? Wouldn't a website be much more accessible?"

It is not necessary to release journals in paper form, your nation can release it online, Ambassador. You are correct in your assertion, though not all member-nations of WA may have internet structures that would make it truly accessible.

prohibit future using of past decisions as legally binding precedent, if the reasoning for reaching them is not publicly available;

OOC: Past decisions of what? Past laws? Court judgements? What if the judgements were made hundreds of years ago, and reasonings were not written down? Or what if the records containing the reasoning have been lost in, say, a natural disaster, fire or war? Why is well-established precedent bad?

OOC: Well-established precedent isn't bad and even a decision without an available reasoning may serve as precedent. Just not the legally binding one. Basically the court in a case with non-binding (persuasive) precedent may choose to follow it, or choose to abandon it, either way it must provide reasons beyond "it was decided so in the past". If a past decision is repeated automatically today, without us knowing why it was even made in the first place and without any argument being made besides that a certain decision was reached in the past, it makes application of law quite a mindless process, wouldn't you agree?

"Decision" here is everything that can be used as "legally binding precedent" in the nation's legal system, this includes court judgments, administrative decisions, and similar. Past laws do not serve as binding precedent, if a nation passed a law, it can always repeal it.

I'm actually not sure of this clause, but I'm keeping it in for now.

require all projects of national legislation, officially considered by the nation’s legislative power, to be publicly accessible, alongside their supplementary explanation, detailing at the minimum:

IC: "'Projects' and 'considered'? Also, have you ever heard of such a thing as national security? Some matters are too sensitive to be posted all over the internet or libraries when they are only considered. If we erased anonymity of suggestion boxes, then your utopia might be achieved, but that would quite negate the point of anonymity in the first place. I thought you wanted more involvement from people, not less."

The resolution would not require every step of the legislative process to be public, only the project of legislation and its explanation. As law, it would need to become public anyway. And nations would not be required to make public details that may be sensitive, like the author's name - info contained in the project's explanation is not a national security issue.

the problem that the project of legislation seeks to address,

IC: "Pray, tell, what problem does the constitution of a nation seek to address?"

Why, either that there is no constitution as of yet and thus a nation's fundamental system of government is not established or, if a new constitution would replace the old one, there is such system but something is broken in it and that necessitates a constitutional law change.

why the addressed problem cannot be resolved via non-legislative means,

IC: "I would very much like you to answer this question yourself, as per this proposal."

Nations could establish programs pushing for legal awareness without WA being involved, either through their own national policies or international programs. But it's the World Assembly, as the primary international body, that can do most to help raise legal awareness in thousands of nations through obligating them to adopt policies proposed here. It can only issue obligations on its members in the form of resolution though, which is the reason for this proposal.

the current state of regulation on the covered issues, including any applicable World Assembly law,

IC: "So, "none" is going to be the answer a lot of the time, when it's not about amendments. Exactly how is that going to be helpful?"

I believe that a situation in which the issue was never addressed in the previous regulations at all would be fairly rare. Especially with WA that is so active in passing legislation.

an opinion on its compliance with the World Assembly law, if the project of legislation touches a matter covered by it,

IC: "Is this a trick question? Or, rather, a joke statement? Do you not know what compliance means? Why would a nation specifically create a law that's going to cause problems with the World Assembly? Remember you're not talking about existing ones but future ones, here."

By requiring this, we would essentially make it so that they at least give it some thought on whether it's compliant. And we would give their citizens some insight on what is the place of World Assembly law in their nation's system, as well as its interpretation. This could also provide some material for education on the topic of WA law that is mandated by GAR#422.

issue official guidelines to the national legislators, to ensure that the national law and lawmaking practices are compliant with World Assembly law, as well as readable to the highest possible extent and free from unintended effects;

IC: "I hope you realize you're mandating the national legislators issue official guidelines to themselves, here? And does "make sure it doesn't contradict the letter of the WA law, dummy" work? What does "readable" mean, here? I am not into obsessing over economists' jargon, so quite a few of the proposals and resolutions around here would already fail your requirement. As for unintended effects, see the above example of a fur farmer. Unintended effects are a fact of life. Every choice you make has unintended effects. You might as well try to mandate that people are to be free from the effects of gravity."

Nations have multiple legislators, you would expect that they would put more experienced and accomplished ones in charge of writing those guidelines. And even if they issued guidelines for themselves, it's still good for their methodology and overall quality of the law produced. "Readable" means that they have to avoid legalese, foreign words, or highly specialist definitions, unless these things are absolutely necessary. "Free from unintended effects" means as much as free from loopholes. I will add that they have to be direct effects.

II. Creates the Legal Education Committee (LEC) and charges it to:

OOC: Are you 100% certain that there isn't a pre-existing committee you could use?

OOC: Actually, there is. WHF established by GAR#495. I think it fits since law is arguably one of the humanities. This is a good point, thanks.

produce educational programs and materials popularizing the topics of general theory, history, and philosophy of law;

IC: "Why is this something you're making the committee do, instead of the nation? Although, again, what does "popularizing" mean? You can't force a topic to become popular, and often trying to push forth something so boring - to the general public - as law-making bureaucracy, will have the opposite of the intended effect."

Moving this into national obligations. "Popularizing" means making something known and understood by the ordinary people. For example, when somebody is said to popularize science, it doesn't mean that they are making it into a thing everybody's talking about, but that they take complex science ideas and put them in layman's terms.

monitor and report on the levels of legal awareness in the member-nations;

IC: "Monitor how? Report to who? Itself?"

There are a couple of ways to monitor legal awareness, they could ran a survey in the representative group of the member-nation's citizens. Because it's the General Assembly requesting a report, it would be the one receiving the report.

grant World Assembly funding and support to programs that would improve popular or specialist knowledge on the matters of national and World Assembly law, including precedents and customary law;

IC: "So you're saying to use WA money to pay the salaries of all the WA ambassadors and their expenses, in here? Do be aware that some of the Strangers' Bar tabs can have astronomical sums on them, I've been told. Why is this a good idea?"

While some of it would go into programs directed at ambassadors, or maybe even run by them, if these programs lacked in quality or were reaching the same people over and over again, the funding could be denied.

OOC: [...] You could likely make a case for Political Stability or Furtherment of Democracy, both, depending on your angle.

OOC: I will consider Furtherment of Democracy if the consensus is that it's just not an Education issue. I think it fits as of now and would fit without this committee too, but anyway.

OOC: I don't think the WA has "organs", the way a RL organization of similar nature would have. It pretty much has the committees made up in resolutions, and that's it. So a you're creating a commmittee, use that and require them to be stored in the library (rather than... be published in it? that sounds wrong).

OOC: Universal Library is an internet based database (established originally by GAR#78), hence "publish". The idea of calling it "appropriate WA organs" instead of Universal Library Coalition (or ULC) was mainly to not repeat Universal Library twice in one sentence (or introduce an acronym readers may not be familiar with). Though now that I think about it, I could just change it to "directs the Universal Library Coalition to publish..." and that would be okay, so I will do that.

I don't entirely see the point of this whole thing to begin with.

OOC: The point of this is to make sure that all laws are publicly available to people, court and administrative decisions are made rationally and not just cause something was decided in the past (when nobody knows why it was decided in the first place), and that people in nation's legislative will actually put their brain into what they are writing. A person may not need to know the law at all times, it's pretty impossible to master all of rl law, but it's rather handy when you can find regulations you're looking for and they don't bombard you with legalese and Latin. (yeah, I know, I'm not good at readability business myself)

I believe that explanations of legislation projects mandated here can also be really handy for those who would want to specialize in law, or even those who might have trouble understanding the law on its own (so they can see what it does via its official explanation).

[Sancta Romana Ecclesia]

Any further comments on this?

OOC: Bump.

[Sancta Romana Ecclesia]

I(3): prohibit future using of past decisions as legally binding precedent, if the reasoning for reaching them is not publicly available;

OOC: So, countries that currently do not record their reasoning for reaching decisions are... left without precedent?

OOC: After some thought, I will be removing that clause in the new draft which will be up... now.

Feel free to comment, if there are no further comments in a week I will bump this thread one more time.

[Tinhampton]

sad ambassador noises

The General Assembly,

Understanding the importance of legal awareness - the level of knowledge that citizens have about the legal system of their nation,

Noting the many benefits of high legal awareness, including the increased transparency of a nation’s judicial system, greater citizens’ involvement in the lawmaking process, and an added safeguard to the nation’s rule of law,

Finding that while this Assembly has passed many resolutions aimed at ensuring that the national laws are fair Such as what?, the Assembly’s legislation on the topic of legal awareness is scarce,

Believing that passing this resolution will fulfill the need for such legislation How exactly will the passage of a single resolution on legal awareness have equivalent impact to "many resolutions" about the fairness of "national laws?", this Assembly hereby:

I. Mandates that all member-nations of the World Assembly must:

1. create a national, publicly accessible official journal, where all of the nation’s future legislation must be published before entering into force;
2. provide the official journal to the nation’s interested citizens, free of charge, to comply with its public accessibility requirement Is there a difference between "accessible to the public" and "this is accessible for free to interested citizens, but you may by implication charge non-residents for this or deny their access to such"?;
3. require all projects of national legislation, officially considered by the nation’s legislative power At least for the British and American central legislatures, bills that are proposed but never actually debated by a committee or the main legislature are published. Would member states have to make similar arrangements in this case, or only for those bills that do actually see the light of day in the main debating chamber?, to be publicly accessible In the same sense as provided for in Article I.2?, alongside their supplementary explanation, detailing at the minimum:
   
   1. the problem that the project of legislation seeks to address,
   2. why the addressed problem cannot be resolved via non-legislative means, "why the addressed problem has not yet been dealt with by the World Assembly?" =P
   3. the current state of regulation on the covered issues, including any applicable World Assembly law,
   4. an opinion on its compliance with the World Assembly law, if the project of legislation touches a matter covered by it, Does this mean that a bill trying to outlaw prostitution would need to have a superfluous supplementary sub-explanation slapped onto it simply reading "Yeah, Clean Prostitute Act says we can do this" (or words to that effect)?
   5. the effects of passing the project as legislation, including but presumably not limited to? I've heard of Congress having to pass the bill to find out what's in it, but not passing the bill and then nobody having any idea as to what the main requirements of the new law are =P any foreseeable financial costs that would arise from it and the means to cover them "We'll deal with that when the next Budget gets voted on";
4. issue official guidelines to the national legislators I agree with Ara's concerns about this clause. Assuming that his reading is correct... What about those members that have just set up a legislature and do not have "more experienced and accomplished ones" as such? Can this not be the responsibility of some non-partisan law commission?, to ensure that the national law and lawmaking practices are compliant with World Assembly law, as well as readable to the highest possible extent and free from direct but unintended effects;
5. produce educational programs and materials popularizing the topics of general theory, history, and philosophy of law Why is this the government's job? I can distinctly remember that all of the textbooks I was using at GCSE and A-Level were produced by private companies rather than the government;

II. Charges the World Humanities Fund (WHF) Opposed to further WHF overreach in any draft UNTIL we find out what's happening with IA's repeal to:

1. monitor and report on the levels of legal awareness in the member-nations How is this to be done? Is the WHF just going to commission not!Gallup to run more than 20,000 different opinion polls simply to gather this data?;
2. recommend educational materials produced by the member-nations for publication in the Universal Library GA#78 is clear that "The Universal Library... may archive any published form of the written word," a description that I am fairly confident that many of the educational materials described in Article I.4 meet. Since this is a distinct piece of new legislation and not a repeal of ULC, what is stopping member states from just submitting any or all of ther educational materials to the Universal Library?, based on their effectiveness at increasing legal awareness as well as international importance How is a national-level educational program supposed to have "international importance?";
3. grant World Assembly funding and support to non-governmental programs that would improve popular or specialist knowledge on the matters of national and World Assembly law, including precedents and customary law;
4. establish objective criteria for granting or denying these funds and support, based on projected quality of education How can "projected quality of education" be an "objective criteri[on]?" provided by the program, its reach Would this imply that - all else being equal and assuming funds only being available for one such project - the WHF ought to prefer funding a program to help reach tens of thousands of fairly-affluent people in an already-educated city than to reach the entire population of a poor nation with maybe a few hundred inhabitants?, and the program's value for money;

III. Directs the Universal Library Coalition to publish all educational materials recommended by the WHF See above mutterings =P and all World Assembly law, including the resolutions no longer in force. GA#442 already makes it incumbent upon the World Assembly Law Distribution Service to publish GA legislation.

[Sancta Romana Ecclesia]

Finding that while this Assembly has passed many resolutions aimed at ensuring that the national laws are fair Such as what?

Charter of Civil Rights is one such example, Preventing the Execution of Innocents is another. Goals of these and similar resolutions is to eliminate unjust institutions from national legal systems. I will cite examples in my new draft.

Believing that passing this resolution will fulfill the need for such legislation How exactly will the passage of a single resolution on legal awareness have equivalent impact to "many resolutions" about the fairness of "national laws?"

I wanted to convey that it will be a step towards fulfilling these needs, not that it will absolutely satisfy these needs. And to answer your question, it won't have that impact, I didn't want it to sound like that, so I'm going to reword it accordingly.

provide the official journal to the nation’s interested citizens, free of charge, to comply with its public accessibility requirement Is there a difference between "accessible to the public" and "this is accessible for free to interested citizens, but you may by implication charge non-residents for this or deny their access to such"?;

I wrote that coming from a pov that there are levels to accessibility. If you post something publicly on a government website, it's publicly accessible, you don't need any credentials to view it. But not all citizens in your nation may be able to view it, more backwards WA members may have problems with internet coverage. To make it more accessible, such nations would then need to take effort to make sure that the official journal is actually provided to the citizens, including those without the internet (e.g. by distributing the journal in a paperback form). So adding this is meant to make a more stringent requirement for it than for "public accessibility" in the later clause 3. But I will have to reword that to make it clearer, as now it feels like I'm defining a term.

[*]require all projects of national legislation, officially considered by the nation’s legislative power At least for the British and American central legislatures, bills that are proposed but never actually debated by a committee or the main legislature are published. Would member states have to make similar arrangements in this case, or only for those bills that do actually see the light of day in the main debating chamber?, to be publicly accessible In the same sense as provided for in Article I.2?, alongside their supplementary explanation, detailing at the minimum:

1. Depends on how "officially considered" is taken. I would accept an interpretation that includes only the bills that go out of the committee and onto a debating floor.

2. No.

why the addressed problem cannot be resolved via non-legislative means, "why the addressed problem has not yet been dealt with by the World Assembly?" =P

"well it would be, but the author didn't spend nearly enough time drafting on the fo-... I mean in the committee."

[*]an opinion on its compliance with the World Assembly law, if the project of legislation touches a matter covered by it, Does this mean that a bill trying to outlaw prostitution would need to have a superfluous supplementary sub-explanation slapped onto it simply reading "Yeah, Clean Prostitute Act says we can do this" (or words to that effect)?

Well, yeah. Although I think it'd be more like "Clean Prostitute Act deals with this issue, but it doesn't prevent us from doing this" (since nations have competence to legislate by default, WA never actually grants them anything new in that regard).

[*]the effects of passing the project as legislation, including but presumably not limited to? I've heard of Congress having to pass the bill to find out what's in it, but not passing the bill and then nobody having any idea as to what the main requirements of the new law are =P any foreseeable financial costs that would arise from it and the means to cover them "We'll deal with that when the next Budget gets voted on";

1. Well I can add "but not limited to" qualifier, but yeah.

2. I think because the explanations needs to "detail" the means to cover the financial costs, this isn't enough

[*]issue official guidelines to the national legislators I agree with Ara's concerns about this clause. Assuming that his reading is correct... What about those members that have just set up a legislature and do not have "more experienced and accomplished ones" as such? Can this not be the responsibility of some non-partisan law commission?, to ensure that the national law and lawmaking practices are compliant with World Assembly law, as well as readable to the highest possible extent and free from direct but unintended effects;

Non-partisan commission sounds good actually, I will add that in when I get to working on the new draft.

produce educational programs and materials popularizing the topics of general theory, history, and philosophy of law Why is this the government's job? I can distinctly remember that all of the textbooks I was using at GCSE and A-Level were produced by private companies rather than the government;

I can change that to "incentivizing" rather than producing.

II. Charges the World Humanities Fund (WHF) Opposed to further WHF overreach in any draft UNTIL we find out what's happening with IA's repeal to:

Okay, I thought that the repeal was settled but I wasn't following what happened to it that closely

monitor and report on the levels of legal awareness in the member-nations How is this to be done? Is the WHF just going to commission not!Gallup to run more than 20,000 different opinion polls simply to gather this data?;

Well, that's one way to go about it... It's rather hard to do so, but I believe this collection of data is necessary if WHF is going to give programs funding based on their reach.

recommend educational materials produced by the member-nations for publication in the Universal Library GA#78 is clear that "The Universal Library... may archive any published form of the written word," a description that I am fairly confident that many of the educational materials described in Article I.4 meet. Since this is a distinct piece of new legislation and not a repeal of ULC, what is stopping member states from just submitting any or all of ther educational materials to the Universal Library?, based on their effectiveness at increasing legal awareness as well as international importance How is a national-level educational program supposed to have "international importance?";

1. Well that is true. I will choose another way of going about what I want to do here then.

2. It has international importance if it touches on principles and theories of law shared by majority of nations in the WA. Because these nations are united in a lawmaking international organization, there must be some common legal principles in their systems

[*]establish objective criteria for granting or denying these funds and support, based on projected quality of education How can "projected quality of education" be an "objective criteri[on]?" provided by the program, its reach Would this imply that - all else being equal and assuming funds only being available for one such project - the WHF ought to prefer funding a program to help reach tens of thousands of fairly-affluent people in an already-educated city than to reach the entire population of a poor nation with maybe a few hundred inhabitants?, and the program's value for money;

1. Requiring a minimum of experience in the topic or academic credentials may be such criterion. You can presume that a group of professors of law will produce a higher quality program than a group of randoms from the street.

2. Actually, the opposite. "Reach" isn't measured just by numbers, it's also measured by the persons that we reach out to (and how much they need the provided education). I will look into clarifying that.

III. Directs the Universal Library Coalition to publish all educational materials recommended by the WHF See above mutterings =P and all World Assembly law, including the resolutions no longer in force. GA#442 already makes it incumbent upon the World Assembly Law Distribution Service to publish GA legislation.

I know that part, but I assume that having it in Universal Library specifically would make it easier to search and cross-reference.