Friday, February 02, 2007
Also in Judicial Council news
I have also received a copy of the new JRPs. I believe they still need to be approved by the Senate. Some changes:
The charge sheet is now to "list all parties that could be directly affected by the outcome of the hearing." I don't know how I feel about this, because in some cases, this could be the entire ASUC.
The plaintiffs and defendants are now explicitly responsible for telling their witnesses and spokesdudes about their rights and responsibilities. The spokesfolk are also explicitly considered agents of the parties, and in election cases, candidates can be held accountable for their actions. I expect parts of this to be stricken by the Senate
Eschelman Hall has been corrected to Eschleman Hall. The actual spelling, as far as I can tell, is Eshleman Hall.
Lots of names of stuff (like default judgment and oral arguments) have been capitalized.
Witnesses can now be sequestered to prevent them from being influenced by the proceedings. This might make presenting a coherent front of lies by an entire party (for example) difficult. I think the Senate will strike this, too, for obvious reasons.
Every participant has to begin the hearing by saying yes to this statement, read by a Judicial Council member:
All participants in a hearing, who knowingly provide untruthful testimony, or attempt to mislead the Council with statements that are untruthful, may be found to have committed perjury, and declared in contempt of Council. The Council may issue such a finding at any time. Do you understand this statement and the implications of the contempt of Council ruling? Heh. Affidavits have to have a similar acknowledgement at the top.
Tampering with evidence, as Oren Gabriel and Vishal Gupta admitted doing over the summer, is now explicitly noted as cause for being held in contempt.
Spokesfolk are now required to answer questions truthfully. Sorry, Suken Vakil!
Also in the "United Lying Front" department, witnesses can't talk with others or be talked to by others while testifying, and are to be "physically separated." Another piece I expect to see stricken.
Default judgments on cases that already have had direct judgments can only be issued through rehearings or appeals.
The statement that prohibited appeals or rehearings by plaintiffs in cases they lose has been removed. Double jeopardy restrictions still apply, I assume, but I imagine that when the target of a suit is the ASUC or some other official, that prohibition is no longer applicable. This is something I was highly interested in, because I think the Judicial Council needs to do a better job of distinguishing between cases holding ASUC officials to account and cases charging ASUC members with violations of rules.
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