[Draft] Ban on Political Assassinations

by **Hanovereich** » Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:22 am

Well, this is my first time doing a resolution, so feedback will be helpful.

So, let me know what you think!

by **Tinhampton** » Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:25 am

Why not just ban murder etc?

by **Hanovereich** » Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:36 am

Eh, I could. But one step at a time.

by **Separatist Peoples** » Tue Jul 13, 2021 6:18 am

"This leaves a great deal of ambiguity, ambassador. A few hypotheticals:

"Tiberius Sempronius Graccus, having angered the Senate with his illegal veto over the Tribune, is murdered in a riot after political enemies in the Senate loudly and aggressively claim he is trying to illegally become a king. Murder or assassination?

"Maximilien Robespierre, of the Committee of Public Safety, is charged with participation in a dictatorship, tried, and executed. His accusers are his political rivals in the National Convention, who benefit from his demise, despite French law clearly banning dictatorship. Assassination or execution? Given the WA has banned execution, we can as easily ask assassination or murder?

"Those in power rarely execute political rivals for being political rivals. They do so under circumstances that provide plausible deniability or under cover of law. How, then, do you expect to regulate such acts?"

by **Hanovereich** » Tue Jul 13, 2021 6:59 am

Separatist Peoples wrote:"This leaves a great deal of ambiguity, ambassador. A few hypotheticals:

"Tiberius Sempronius Graccus, having angered the Senate with his illegal veto over the Tribune, is murdered in a riot after political enemies in the Senate loudly and aggressively claim he is trying to illegally become a king. Murder or assassination?

"Maximilien Robespierre, of the Committee of Public Safety, is charged with participation in a dictatorship, tried, and executed. His accusers are his political rivals in the National Convention, who benefit from his demise, despite French law clearly banning dictatorship. Assassination or execution? Given the WA has banned execution, we can as easily ask assassination or murder?

"Those in power rarely execute political rivals for being political rivals. They do so under circumstances that provide plausible deniability or under cover of law. How, then, do you expect to regulate such acts?"

“Respectfully, Secretariat, your first scenario would be an assassination. The matter of becoming King would be a political one under my definition. As for the second one, it would be murder, or execution, since the law bans dictatorships and Robespierre satisfies that category.”

“I understand your concerns, and I have decided to add additional clauses to investigate any acts suspected of being illegal and for individual gains. Here…”

5. Any killing, or proven attempted killing, that may be suspected of being an assassination, under the defintion of this resolution, will be investigated by national authorities. This investigation must be open to scrutiny and review for impartiality.

“I may even establish a WA body on this matter for international review. Anything else?”

OOC: I believe Graccus’ enemies mistakenly believed that Graccus wanted to become King. If that’s true, it may be manslaughter due to the riot.

by **Potted Plants United** » Tue Jul 13, 2021 7:40 am

OOC: Leave your current draft visible, only spoiler older ones.

Clause 4 is out of place, as it's SC that deals with condemnations and thus that clause has no legal effect in a GA proposal and should at most be a preamble clause. I would honestly just avoid using "condemn" as verb anywhere in a GA proposal.

by **Hanovereich** » Tue Jul 13, 2021 8:12 am

“I see. I will fix my draft accordingly.”

OOC: Yeah well, I’ll get round to adding and removing the clauses when I have time. Not now.

by **Separatist Peoples** » Tue Jul 13, 2021 4:52 pm

Hanovereich wrote:
Separatist Peoples wrote:"This leaves a great deal of ambiguity, ambassador. A few hypotheticals:

"Tiberius Sempronius Graccus, having angered the Senate with his illegal veto over the Tribune, is murdered in a riot after political enemies in the Senate loudly and aggressively claim he is trying to illegally become a king. Murder or assassination?

"Maximilien Robespierre, of the Committee of Public Safety, is charged with participation in a dictatorship, tried, and executed. His accusers are his political rivals in the National Convention, who benefit from his demise, despite French law clearly banning dictatorship. Assassination or execution? Given the WA has banned execution, we can as easily ask assassination or murder?

"Those in power rarely execute political rivals for being political rivals. They do so under circumstances that provide plausible deniability or under cover of law. How, then, do you expect to regulate such acts?"

“Respectfully, Secretariat, your first scenario would be an assassination. The matter of becoming King would be a political one under my definition. As for the second one, it would be murder, or execution, since the law bans dictatorships and Robespierre satisfies that category.”

“I understand your concerns, and I have decided to add additional clauses to investigate any acts suspected of being illegal and for individual gains. Here…”

5. Any killing, or proven attempted killing, that may be suspected of being an assassination, under the defintion of this resolution, will be investigated by national authorities. This investigation must be open to scrutiny and review for impartiality.

“I may even establish a WA body on this matter for international review. Anything else?”

OOC: I believe Graccus’ enemies mistakenly believed that Graccus wanted to become King. If that’s true, it may be manslaughter due to the riot.

"If Graccus has been assassinated, who is the mastermind of the assassination? Senators merely exclaimed that he was trying to become a king, how could they have possibly have known a mob would form?

"My concern is not that the crime cannot be identified as assassination but that it cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. That essentially makes this attempt useless. As I noted, those who benefit from assassination rarely act brazenly. So how would this law stymie such acts? "

by **Imperium Anglorum** » Tue Jul 13, 2021 7:30 pm

Hanovereich wrote:“Respectfully, Secretariat, your first scenario would be an assassination. The matter of becoming King would be a political one under my definition. As for the second one, it would be murder, or execution, since the law bans dictatorships and Robespierre satisfies that category.”

Elsie Mortimer Wellesley. The affair with Ti Sempronius Gracchus – a classic essay topic in our nation's history curriculum – and, it seems, this Robespierre, are very much the same. The republic then, and now, has laws against kingship and dominatio factionis. If what certain senators – I say that to draw a distinction between those senators who killed Gracchus and those who stayed at the curia, as the senate or the consuls at the time in the year of the consulship Scaevola and Frugi did not participate, – believed was true, it would almost certainly have been a capital offence. The question is not one of law, it is one of fact. Most modern scholars view Ti Sempronius Gracchus' proposals as part of a substantial continuity of past republican practice. The proximate cause of Scipio Nasica, then pontifex maximus, was not even a justification rooted in dispute over policy, but one related to the legality of attempting to bring a consecutive candidature before the comitia.

by **Hanovereich** » Tue Jul 13, 2021 11:59 pm

Separatist Peoples wrote:
Hanovereich wrote:
“Respectfully, Secretariat, your first scenario would be an assassination. The matter of becoming King would be a political one under my definition. As for the second one, it would be murder, or execution, since the law bans dictatorships and Robespierre satisfies that category.”

“I understand your concerns, and I have decided to add additional clauses to investigate any acts suspected of being illegal and for individual gains. Here…”

5. Any killing, or proven attempted killing, that may be suspected of being an assassination, under the defintion of this resolution, will be investigated by national authorities. This investigation must be open to scrutiny and review for impartiality.

“I may even establish a WA body on this matter for international review. Anything else?”

OOC: I believe Graccus’ enemies mistakenly believed that Graccus wanted to become King. If that’s true, it may be manslaughter due to the riot.

"If Graccus has been assassinated, who is the mastermind of the assassination? Senators merely exclaimed that he was trying to become a king, how could they have possibly have known a mob would form?

"My concern is not that the crime cannot be identified as assassination but that it cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. That essentially makes this attempt useless. As I noted, those who benefit from assassination rarely act brazenly. So how would this law stymie such acts? "

"Like how any other law would confront this problem. An investigation, first on the national level, then the international level, can now be done using the clauses of this resolution. However, I will welcome any other suggestions you may have on this topic."

by **Separatist Peoples** » Wed Jul 14, 2021 3:42 am

Hanovereich wrote:
Separatist Peoples wrote:"If Graccus has been assassinated, who is the mastermind of the assassination? Senators merely exclaimed that he was trying to become a king, how could they have possibly have known a mob would form?

"My concern is not that the crime cannot be identified as assassination but that it cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. That essentially makes this attempt useless. As I noted, those who benefit from assassination rarely act brazenly. So how would this law stymie such acts? "

"Like how any other law would confront this problem. An investigation, first on the national level, then the international level, can now be done using the clauses of this resolution. However, I will welcome any other suggestions you may have on this topic."

"Which will yield nothing because such persons already have an incentive to hide their action. Most WA law doesn't seek to solve an impossible problem with a vauge command to go forth and investigate, ambassador. This is about as likely to have your desired outcome as a ban on international espionage. Where it's already happening it will keep happening, and this proposal will do nothing to prevent it."

by **Hanovereich** » Wed Jul 14, 2021 3:59 am

“It will at least strengthen existing regulation against political corruption, both national and international. I will still take your points and add it into the draft.”

by **The Hazar Amisnery** » Wed Jul 14, 2021 4:02 am

"Banning assassination isn't going to stop it. All societies ban murder yet people are murdered everyday. I do not see the purpose in this proposal"

by **Separatist Peoples** » Wed Jul 14, 2021 4:09 am

Hanovereich wrote:“It will at least strengthen existing regulation against political corruption, both national and international. I will still take your points and add it into the draft.”

"By requiring states take precisely the same steps they already would take to investigate any high profile murder? Ambassador you may as well mandate states enforce their traffic laws.

"Developed states cannot survive routine and overt slaughter of their government, nor can be seen publicly accepting that state of affairs. States already have incentive to investigate and prosecute such killings to at least assuage concerns of overt corruption. You need to find some action the state is incentivize to overlook to have any meaningful effect."

by **Araraukar** » Thu Jul 15, 2021 4:00 am

OOC: If this is still being worked on, leave the current draft visible in the first post.

by **Hanovereich** » Thu Jul 15, 2021 4:01 am

Araraukar wrote:OOC: If this is still being worked on, leave the current draft visible in the first post.

OOC: It is. The first draft is the original one, and the second draft is the current one. I need to label this better.

by **Araraukar** » Thu Jul 15, 2021 4:15 am

Hanovereich wrote:
Araraukar wrote:OOC: If this is still being worked on, leave the current draft visible in the first post.

OOC: It is. The first draft is the original one, and the second draft is the current one. I need to label this better.

OOC: LEAVE IT VISIBLE.

This is visible.

by **South St Maarten** » Thu Jul 15, 2021 7:02 am

OOC: I'd guess the idea for this resolution came in lieu of the assassination of the president of Haiti.

IC: Has this World Assembly not yet banned murder? I presume it has in some resolution, and if not, it should. Even so, the specificity of the category makes little sense to me. Take clause III:

States that this is only meant to cover assassinations solely for the purpose of political gain or advantage

So assassinations not done with the intentions of political gain or advantage are not included? Why? In my opinion, if there is already WA legislation barring murder, then this proposal is unnecessary. And if there isn't, you should rewrite this to include all types of intentional murder. I suppose there might be room to work with if you were specifically concerned about the penalty for assassination attempts, etc. But even then, I would characterize that as a domestic affair.

by **Separatist Peoples** » Thu Jul 15, 2021 9:11 am

Araraukar wrote:
Hanovereich wrote:OOC: It is. The first draft is the original one, and the second draft is the current one. I need to label this better.

OOC: LEAVE IT VISIBLE.

This is visible.

Readable but not visible.

Ooc: there's no obligation not to spoiler an active draft. You need not make demands. OP can organize how he likes.

by **Bears Armed** » Fri Jul 16, 2021 11:09 am

South St Maarten wrote:IC: Has this World Assembly not yet banned murder? I presume it has in some resolution

OOC: Not yet, AFAIK, and an attempt back in NS-UN days failed. The general presumption is that any "reasonable" nation will already have introduced such a ban for itself anyway.

by **Sierra Lyricalia** » Fri Jul 16, 2021 5:59 pm

"'Surrounded by Moslem maniacs on one side, and Christian maniacs on the other, the wise lord Hassan preserved his people and his cult by bringing the art of assassination to esthetic perfection. With just a few daggers strategically placed in the right throats, he found Wisdom's alternative to war, and preserved the peoples by killing their leaders. Truly, his was a most exemplary life of grandmotherly kindness.'"

Leo looks up from his quotation.

"Opposed."

by **Kurogasa** » Sat Jul 17, 2021 5:54 am

Isn't this basically like banning espionage?, I might be wrong but I don't think people do these things in the open or claiming authorship.

by **WayNeacTia** » Sat Jul 17, 2021 2:52 pm

Kurogasa wrote:Isn't this basically like banning espionage?, I might be wrong but I don't think people do these things in the open or claiming authorship.

Precisely. And the agencies that conduct these operation use non-sanctioned agents anyways, so this will do little other than say "POLITICAL ASSASINATION IS WRONG!". I suspect the recent events in Haiti may have inspired this. As such I would vote against this on the basis someone is trying to capitalize on real world events to try and score an authorship badge, rather than coming up with something that is actually creative.

[Draft] Ban on Political Assassinations

[Draft] Ban on Political Assassinations

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