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ASUCD Jurisprudence
Nov. 28th, 2006 02:09 pm
The Case 34, Savaree-Ruess vs. Carnes et Al, Hearing has been postponed until Wednesday next week pursuant to a motion by the Defence.
I stopped by the Student Government Administrative Office (SGAO) today and found Plaintiff Savaree-Ruess, Defence Counsel Powers, Associate Defence Counsel Harms and ASUCD Advisor Tucker all hanging out. Ruess said that his team (which includes Defence Counsel Greg "Big City Lawyer" Russel) is already working on one-liners to use during the Hearing. Powers vowed to be equally prepared for the battle of wits.
Powers has also created an "ASUCD Legal Defence Team" facebook group. Clearly, the legal armsrace is on!
Anyway, during my twenty hours of driving this past week, as I said I had altogether too much time to ponder the deep questions in life ... such as how to make ASUCD even better! I came up with two brilliant insights:
Deliberate Oral Exams
The actual reason I was lurking around the third floor was to pitch this idea to Tucker.
Basically, I was pondering how the interviewing process for prospective justices could be made to better highlight the skills one wants justices to be selected based upon. The normal interview process only works if the interviewers ask brilliantly insightful questions, and even then they might get at the mentality of the Justice, which is important, but it leaves utterly no guidance as to whether tehy will be an involved and effective Justice.
Now the way the US State Department examines prospective foreign service officers is, after making an initial cut in written exams, they put a dozen or so applicants in a room ... and have them fight to the death! Not really but they make them work on some theoretical project in which they'll need to compromise and work together.
And so I was thinking, what if we get the judicial applicants together in groups of nine provide them with a hypothetical case, and watch them deliberate! The people currently mandated to be on the interviewing committee observe these deliberations and can then make selections on a basis of effectiveness, insightfulness, judicial mentality, and all kinds of other relevant informations!
I pitched it to Tucker and he thought it was a great idea and could even be implimented for the interviews that are coming up asap. He's still got to pitch it to President Holloway though, who as chair of the interviewing committee is the one who decides. But I'm very excited about it. Time to rustle up a case.
And hey take note UC Merced, I know you've been stalled for weeks on the judicial interview process!
Fully-Automatic Recall
Currently, at universities nationwide, there is a problem with elections. That being, that (1) if a candidate gets disqualified, they very frequently sue anyone and everyone until the right people roll over and let them take office, since no one but the candidate themselves cares about it enough to go to court over it; and (2) the candidate invariably cites a misguided interpretation of "democracy" or "will of the people" to support their position. It has been of little avail to advise them that its not "will of the people" if they had an unfair opportunity to influence "the people" or "the people" didn't know critical information about their character. But I came up with a solution that utterly resolves both these problems.
Keep the system of "campaign violations" or "censures" which are given in various amounts for various severities of violations. BUT where currently a certain number mandate disqualification (three in ASUCD, five at Berkeley I believe), replace disqualification with automatic recall. Basically, the candidate still gets elected into office, but a recall election is immediately scheduled for them the following week.
In this matter, it can be conclusively determined whether "the People" would overlook their indiscretions, and I can't imagine a lawsuit overcoming this second voicing of the "will of the people."
