Monday, February 12, 2007
Some whining
I want to whine a little bit about the Judicial Council's rejection of my case charging that the GA amendment was presented illegally. Unlike some folks, I respect that, in a democracy, I won't always get my way, so I don't expect to do anything about this, but I do like whining, and maybe Bobby wants to argue, so...
What I charged was that constitutional amendments can't be proposed as parts of larger legislative packages. The Constitution describes amendments and referenda as different, distinct things with different thresholds and such. It seems odd to me that we can restructure the government in a way that many people don't like simply by attaching a constitutional amendment to a more popular proposal.
The Judicial Council rejected this case because I only noticed the violation while writing up the charge sheet about the GA breaking the Memorandum of Understanding that they passed. They said that they didn't feel that voiding the MOU was an appropriate remedy for part of it being broken.
This explanation was fine for my MOU charge. But it doesn't seem to make sense for the illegal amendment one. The fact that a remedy is severe doesn't seem like it should matter when charging a constitutional violation. Is the standard being set that "Constitutional violations are okay as long as fixing them might seem a bit unfair"? The Judicial Council didn't seem to claim that the remedy I requested was inappropriate for the violation I charged (that it was illegally placed on the ballot), which is the standard I thought the Judicial Council used.
The timing of the suit is also a reasonable reason for questioning the suit, but I don't see why it would matter in this case. Is the standard being set this time that "Constitutional violations are okay as long as no one catches them fast enough"?
Essentially, the Judicial Council ruled that because I didn't notice a constitutional violation until and because the GA violated the MOU, the remedy has to be appropriate for the GA violating the MOU, rather than for the constitutional violation, and that doesn't make sense to me.
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