A destruction of justice

I came to SecondLife in August 2006, having read an article in the New Scientist magazine about law in virtual worlds, and in particular the Superior Court of SecondLife experiment in 2005 that failed because it aspired to apply to the entire of SecondLife, rather than a specific self-governing subset, and because it had no powers of enforcement. The article concluded by suggesting that the future of law in virtual worlds such as SecondLife is law created and enforced by specific self-governing communities. Professor David Post in articles such as this one suggests the same thing, and emphasises the importance of the development of law in virtual worlds.

Being an English barrister by profession, I thought that it might be a worthwhile and fascinating project to use my legal knowledge help to develop a serious, professional legal system in a self-governing community in SecondLife; after all, law is a very difficult thing to get right, and requires a great deal of time both to learn and to perfect in practice.

The first step was to look around self-governing communities to see whether any was interested in having its legal system developed. I looked at Caledon, but it was fairly clear from the start that the people who ran that were not interested in formal mechanisms of governance, so I did not pursue that further. I also found a place called Neufreistadt. It was smaller than Caledon, but had a formal constitution and governmental institutions, complete with a parliament that met every week and regular elections: it claimed at the time to be SecondLife's only democratic state.

I spoke to some people there, and it became clear that they were lacking a proper legal system, and that they were interested in having one. They had had problems in the past with a high-profile "trial" (some people may remember the Ulrika Zugzwang incident), where they had great difficulties because they had no formalised procedures, and had spent twenty hours trying to work out how to conduct the trial, with a result that was rather unsatisfactory for all concerned (they dispensed, for example, with the constitutional requirement that a judgment shall be delivered by a "jury of peers" on the grounds that the "facts weren't clear enough"; in real-life, unclear facts are dealt with by having burdens of proof that give those accused of wrongdoing the benefit of the doubt, if there is any).

So, I became a "citizen", and posted in the forum (at some considerable length) offering to help to create a serious, professional legal system, heavily inspired by, but not identical to, the English legal system with which I am familiar (one of the oldest and best respected legal systems in the world, and undoubtedly the most imitated), with a common law system, but with detailed procedural rules written in advance, highly skilled judges, a set of courts dealing with everyday cases, and a constitutional court (formed by the same people who had undertaken all the judicial work before) that would hear impeachment cases and appeals from the ordinary courts on limited, constitutional grounds, and nothing else.

Not very many people responded to the initial thread (some thought it a bit long; one could perhaps compare it to a computer programmer explaining exactly how he was going to code a piece of software), although there was a great deal of interest in the idea, and one of the same people who had initially spoken to me and encouraged me to assist with a judicial system suggested that the process would be expedited if I just wrote proposed legislation and submit it, so I did so. A number of the details were very controversial, and they were debated at length; the appointment of judges, in particular, was a hot topic, but, eventually, after months of hard debate, a compromise was reached with which all those who participated in the debate appeared to be content. The legislature then passed a constitutional amendment (as announced here) implementing the judicial system that I had always proposed. Shortly afterwards, the requisite authorities also appointed me as the first, and at that time only, judge.

As a result of the judicial system that I had helped to create, about eight new "citizens" (not including me), which constituted over 10% of the population, were attracted to the community, and the community featured prominently in a number of media reports (including four pages in the SecondLife Business magazine and even an interview on BBC Radio 4, who wanted to do a follow-up when our first case was heard). I had spent an enormous amount of time writing the detailed procedural rules that were necessary, and in setting up the qualification tests for new judges under the procedures required by the compromise that was reached on judicial selection. There was a thriving community of first-life legal professionals who had come to the community to help to take part in the running of the judicial system (some people had initially been concerned that there would not be enough people wanting to dedicate time to a properly-functioning judicial system), many of whom, despite being successful lawyers in the first life, were prepared to work either for free or for SecondLife scaled fees (i.e., for no more than a few hundred or thousand Linden Dollars). A number of people had undertaken a great deal of work to pass rigorous judicial qualification tests that had been set to assess the skill of incoming judges, including people with extremely busy first-life legal practices.

At the beginning of this month, a week before an election (they are held every six months), the legislature in Neufreistadt (which had by then become known as the "Confederation of Democratic Simulators", or "CDS" for short), purposely destroyed the entire judicial system and re-subjected the whole population to the frankly incompetent system that had gone before, made up of people none of whom have any legal training or experience. The reasons cited by the legislature (the exact same people who had unanimously approved the original judicial system) for destroying it were: (1) they did not want a professional system; (2) they did not want a system modelled on English practice; (3) they did not want a common law system (where they will find time to draft entire comprehensive codes of law is beyond me); (4) they did not want a system in which only one person could ever be a judge (one will remember that they were the self-same people who decided to appoint me as the only judge); (5) they did not want detailed procedural rules; and (6) they did not want judges to have to be legally skilled, or selected in accordance with the process that was agreed on as a compromise after lengthy debate.

There are two consequences of this perversity. The first, and most obvious, is that nobody can ever expect there to be any real justice in the "Confederation" for the foreseeable future, certainly for as long as the same people hold power (two of the same legislators are still in office, and 4/5ths of the legislature is made up of people who were in favour of destroying the judicial system).

The second, and probably most important, is that they have been revealed as having what can only be described as a catastrophically disrespectful attitude towards volunteer labour of the sort that is vital to any community in SecondLife. Given that the judicial system into which I and a number of other people put a great deal of work was destroyed, not because it was tried and found wanting in practice (it was destroyed before any cases were heard, even though there was a case outstanding), but because the exact same people who had approved the original design changed their minds and decided that they did not like the inherent and fundamental features of that original design that I had made very clear from the beginning were integral parts of what I was proposing: it is not the case that one constitution of the legislature decided one thing, and then, after an election, a new legislature had a different idea; it was exactly the same people who put the system in place as destroyed it. Apart from me, several other of the people who had once formed the thriving community of legal professionals have also left the "Confederation", one of whom, a person who had spent a considerable amount of time qualifying to be a judge, was very unhappy indeed that all of his work had been wasted.

Anybody who is ever tempted to join the CDS and undertake any work for them (whether related to a judicial system or not) - for goodness' sake, whatever you do, don't! There is a very high chance that hours of your work will be wasted by the irresponsible people who run it changing their mind.

(Incidentally, anybody expecting that those who destroyed the judicial system, and their allies, might be persuaded to do something sensible by carefully reasoned arguments will be disappointed: a substantial number of those involved in the debate have shown themselves to be impervious to reason, some of them even resorting to personal attacks when the argument is not going their way: the debates became exceedingly unpleasant towards the end).

I know that the idea of having a judicial system at all is controversial (as the responses on the original thread show), but there are a significant number of people in SecondLife who believe that a serious judicial system of one sort or another is warranted in at least some parts of SecondLife and the actions of the irresponsible people in the "Confederation" have made that aspiration substantially further away than it could have been. All is not lost, however: a competing set of truly professional and serious judicial and governmental systems on an efficient, opt-in basis have a good chance of emerging if the ideas in this thread are taken seriously, and I am planning to re-start that group's activities, soon.

However, even for those who dislike the idea of government in SecondLife, it cannot be denied that the conduct of those in power in the "Confederation" in relation to skilled volunteer labour is nothing short of abhorrent, and enough by itself for everybody to steer well clear of the place indefinitely. Pleasant self-governing communities, without irresponsible and intellectually dishonest rulers, include Caledon and Port Neualtenburg.

__________________
Ashcroft Burnham

"We do not permit a man to rule, but the law" (Aristotle).

Mmmm... wow.

I haven't been over here much due to a zillion other things going on, but... this deserved a reply.

First off, and maybe most obvious - Ashcroft, I doubt your posting will have the desired effect of discouraging anyone from the CDS sims.

As they say in theatre: a bad review with a picture is worth more than a good review, and the only truly damning review is no review at all.

That said, I think everyone is pretty clear on your position.




With regard to a justice system in Caledon: I believe that a true justice system (one having checks and balances) is nearly impossible.

Any system that could be removed by the person in control of the sims (i.e. me) instantly isn't really a justice system at all, but a 'rubber stamp' of my personal leanings, as long as I generally agreed with it. Sure, it might be able to do a couple of inconsequential things, but would I ever allow an additional system to have a real 'check' on my control over my own sims? Not likely.

I'm not sure I'd call all this intellectual honestly - more like: plain old honesty. Of the sort that anyone would see right through, were I to say the opposite. I'm in the business of preserving my sims for the benefit of both everyone in them, and myself. Not in the business of risking them (and everyone's efforts therein) over principle.

This is the primary conundrum; I don't see justice systems taking off until there really is a true separation of powers - a 'king's court' is no court at all. In that regard, I'm just as stumped as everyone else with regard to implementing such a thing as 'justice of the people.'

__________________
- Desmond Shang


Steampunk Victorian, Well-Mannered Caledon: secondlife://caledon/190/190
West Trade Imports LTD Architecture & Antiques: secondlife://alice/89/114

People deserve to be warned. Whether they heed the warning is entirely a matter for them.

That is where the Local Government Study Group comes in - have a look at the notecard attached to my latest group notice for a fairly detailed idea of how these issues should be addressed.

Incidentally, the English legal system started from exactly that: the King's court, the ultimate judge being the king himself, although the king delegated the power to professional lawyers before long, having far more interesting things to do in ruling the country. It was very much in the king's interest that his courts should seem to be fair: in the days before modern technology allowed for truly totalitarian states, the possibility of a rebellion was never entirely out of a monarch's mind, a situation strikingly similar, as you have pointed out yourself on numerous occasions, to the position of a ruler SecondLife. There may be much to be learnt from the evolution of the modern state in the UK, since it is a striking parallel to SecondLife nations in many ways.

__________________
Ashcroft Burnham

"We do not permit a man to rule, but the law" (Aristotle).

I was quite saddened to see the JA repealed. I had 3 cases I wanted heard, the first being prepared and I believe submitted by Dexter Leopold. Two of the cases were mortagage/loans defaults that, while I had little chance of recovering the ~$600USD, would serve as good test cases.

So it was a great deal of work, consumed probably the majority of the community's attention over the last 6 months and it was finally repealed. I supported it from beginning to end and wished I was better able to defend it and reach the required compromises and accomodations.

I'm not sure what lessons to draw from the repeal other than when test cases or "the rubber hits the road", there can be a backlash if implementation is not perceived to be smooth. The same type of thing seems to be happening with 5-4, the franchulate bill, we have our first application. As Desmond says, the devil is in the details.

I lost my RA seat in the election and wasn't able to get in-world to campaign properly. I'll be staying in the CDS to focus on my business and I sincerely hope that the CDS can build a working judiciary.

I am also very much interested in political and judiciary developments outside of the CDS, especially the LGSG, law society, Caledon, and basically anything that Ashcroft is working on. One cannot but be amazed by his vision and productivity. -Pel