The totally official guide to GA 2 “Rights and Duties”

Welcome to the totally official guide to GA 2 "Rights and Duties of WA States". This will be a public commentary on the resolution which is absolutely and entirely official. Before everything else, time to talk history. GA 2 is a resolution based on UN 49 (HR 49) "Rights and Duties of UN States". Both …

Drafting GA resolution text

Drafting GA resolution text, as with other legislative texts, is somewhat difficult for someone without experience to do well. In general I have other advice for the more conceptual stages. But this post relates only to the actual part of writing your proposal. Present tense Use present tense when you are legislating for present and …

Post tags and meanings

The General Assembly forum, with a super sekrit lair redacted for your protection. This is a list of post tags used in the General Assembly, in no particular order. I purposefully excluded some post tag variations which I dislike. Unless otherwise indicated, I would prefer these specific tags to be used more, but I know …

Resolutions that don’t do anything

Photo by Mathias P.R. Reding on Pexels.com. I'm sure that this post will not be too popular, especially with the people who may see themselves brought up as examples. But I will not name any names and it is a topic worth visiting. A lot of resolutions recently passed or proposed do not actually do …

Use tests instead of “reasonable”

Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels.com I posted a while back about how "reasonable" is not a standard and is too amorphous to make good law. Some people have asked me for some next steps for replacing "reasonable". The answer is to borrow from jurisprudence and use tests. What tests do broadly is give articulable …

Politics in the United Commonwealth

The United Commonwealth is composed of two co-equal sovereignties, the Roman Republic and the Kingdom of the Angles. The two of them are joined in a federal structure at the Imperial Parliament (also called the federal Parliament). The republic The republic was founded in 0 RE by Lucius Junius Brutus. The modern republic of 1920 …

Just saying ‘reasonable’ is not a standard

Lots of authors just like to throw out the word "reasonable" into their drafts and pretend that it is a catch-all for everything. That is not what what "reasonable" actually is; and absent any clear statement of what "reasonable" is, it cannot be such a catch-all. Alone, "reasonable" establishes no clear, workable, or effective standard. …

Court style repeals

Repeals traditionally are written in UN style. That style has proven more versatile for cases where an opinion needs to be conveyed, which – sadly for the United Nations – is reflective of the mostly advisory capacity in which the UN currently operates. This usually involves a list of various introductory verbs – concerned, exasperated, …

GA resolution as stories

Photo by ugurlu photographer on Pexels.com Every law is a story. This is a reasonably well known idea. I cannot say that I originated it. In fact, I am borrowing it now from some guidance written by the UK Office of Parliamentary Counsel's guidance for drafting. In practice, in the GA context, what does this …

Barlordian Conventions

This is taken verbatim from Ardchoille's post on the UN Old Guard forum. The Barlordian Conventions 1. No Weapons. You can bring them in, but they will turn into something else, owing to the weird and unreliable Acme machinery Neville the Barlord constantly orders from catalogues. 2. No killings. If you kill anyone, one of …