[LEGALITY CHALLENGE] Freedom Of Opinion And Belief

[PotatoFarmers]

Proposal In Question: Forum Thread here

Freedom of Opinion and Belief
A resolution to improve worldwide human sapient and civil rights.

Category: Civil Rights

Strength: Significant

Proposed by: Tinhampton

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Whereas brainwashing is bad and wrong, the General Assembly hereby:

1. forbids member states from:
   
   1. criminalising the holding of any opinion, even when the expression of that opinion would constitute a crime,
   2. criminalising the status of possessing or lacking any arbitrary or reductive characteristic, and
   3. requiring any of their inhabitants to affirm, express, retract or reject any opinion or belief, even if those inhabitants sincerely hold those opinions or beliefs,
2. prohibits the World Assembly and its agents from discriminating against:
   
   1. any person or group due to their holding (not necessarily expression) of any opinions or beliefs, nor any arbitrary and reductive characteristics they may possess, and
   2. any government due to any of their actions (except where necessary, or otherwise required by resolution, to ensure that said member complies with international law) or their beliefs,
3. requires members to permit the holding and expression of facts, however inconvenient, by their inhabitants, and
4. clarifies that no part of this resolution other than Article a(iii) directly regulates the actual expression of opinions or other speech.

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Rule Broken: Contradiction
Clause in Question:

c. requires members to permit the holding and expression of facts, however inconvenient, by their inhabitants,

Argument: The clause would force member states to allow free expression of any facts. This would mean that laws to restrict the access to factual content would be not allowed by this clause. However, GA#330: Nuclear Testing Protocol, provides just 1 example of why this cannot be done:

7. Further demands that member nations classify all information and materials related to nuclear testing as state secrets and prevent this information or material with anyone not authorized to have access to this information,

Emphasis mine. Information related to nuclear testing is likely to be classified as facts. By GA330, these information cannot be freely shared with unauthorized personnel. The clause in Freedom Of Opinion And Belief clearly contradicts this law, unless GA330 could be broadly interpreted to mean that everyone, by default, is authorized to have access to this information. Which doesn't seem to make sense.

[Tsaivao]

I think you're misinterpreting clause c. The target states that citizens are permitted to hold and express factual information, not that all factual information is to be given to citizens. The inconvenience I believe is more accurately interpreted as "Citizens can hold whatever things are believed to be factual, even in spite of what the government desires," not "If a government employee leaks information then no one can stop them."

I personally would think this is a good topic to make a repeal on, but I don't think it's a direct contradiction. I could be wrong though

[Imperium Anglorum]

It includes "expression of facts, however inconvenient". Nuclear secrets are facts; they are very inconvenient to get out.

[Morover]

I suppose I could see an argument that Tinhampton's proposal would merely have the unintended consequence of requiring member-nations to make all individuals authorized to have this information, meaning that the two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but that would really be stretching it. Other than that, I can't really see any other defense of the clause in question, so I generally side with the challenger in this scenario.

[Desmosthenes and Burke]

To add, under Tinhampton's resolution how would one go about enforcing the provisions of say, the Child Pornography ban against a person who merely started reciting the web addresses of servers hosting it? Or the provisions of Rights of Crime Victims related to "the right to prevent the accused from accessing the crime victim's address and personal identifying information without a court order" if the state cannot prohibit someone from simply stating it aloud in the presence of the accused? "X can be found at www.address.com" and "Snitch's address is X" are statements of objective fact, after all.

[Bananaistan]

GenSec has voted to hear this challenge.

[Jedinsto]

GenSec seems to have accepted the challenge, this has been marked illegal.

[Separatist Peoples]

GenSec seems to have accepted the challenge, this has been marked illegal.

Proper procedure is to change the cp votes to hold the proposal. We are not always good about making the switch. If we rule legal, the votes will switch back.

[Jedinsto]

GenSec seems to have accepted the challenge, this has been marked illegal.

Proper procedure is to change the cp votes to hold the proposal. We are not always good about making the switch. If we rule legal, the votes will switch back.

Gotcha

[Sierra Lyricalia]

*** Opinion of the Secretariat ***

We find the challenged proposal illegal for contradiction. Bananaistan wrote the opinion, joined by Separatist Peoples, Bears Armed, and Sierra Lyricalia. No dissents.

The challenged proposal requires that member states permit the "expression of facts, however inconvenient". GAR#330 explicitly requires member states to prevent the expression of fact in certain cases. Thus we find the challenged proposal illegal under the contradiction rule.