[2403.HR] Review of the Rejection of Siberian Districts' Citizenship Application

[Siberian]

To start, sorry for cluttering up the #gov-discussion channel in Discord, what was meant to be looking for the proper channel and providing my reasons for an appeal turned into snark and arguments. And now-

In accordance with the Charter of the Coalition of the South Pacific,

(VII. 4) The High Court has the power to declare any general law, regulation, directive, determination or any other official act of government, in whole or in part, void upon a determination that it violates the terms of this Charter or any other constitutional law.

I would like to request a review of the CRS’ decision to deny my citizenship application, under the grounds that it is unconstitutional. I will be addressing the rejection telegram from the CRS as it provided more detail for why I was deemed a “significant risk to regional security”.

The Telegram

Alt Text (Screenshot of Citizenship Committee Denial Telegram)

Hello,

Your citizenship application has been rejected because the Council on Regional Security considers you a significant risk to regional security (Art. 2 Section 1 c. of the Citizenship Act) on the grounds of your involvement in the 2016 coup, combined with present membership in an organization that is in general antagonistic to defenders and in particular at war with several of TSP’s allies.

Your application thread: Siberian (Siberian Districts)

– Citizenship Committee

The first reason for the rejection was my involvement in the 2016 coup- something I was then granted general amnesty for under the Assembly Resolution to Restore the Coalition of the South Pacific. Denial of citizenship due to actions covered by general amnesty is, in my opinion, a breach of my rights as a member of the South Pacific.

(B. 2.) All individuals involved in the forum move and the Transitional Government will receive a general amnesty for their actions, conditional on good behaviour and acknowledgement of culpability, and revocable by the Assembly at any time during the next six months.

The second stated reason was my “present membership in an organization that is in general antagonistic to defenders and in particular at war with several of TSP’s allies”. I am a member of the Brotherhood of Malice. BoM is not a proscribed region, nor have I committed any direct acts of aggression to TSP under their banner. I fail to see what my membership in Malice, or the relationship between Malice and other TSP allies has to do with any of the legal reasons for denying a citizenship.

I’m happy to answer any questions from the High Court or provide more explanations on whatever they see fit.

EDIT: Alt text accessibility fixes plus missing words here and there
EDIT 2: Added hyperlink + quote

[KrisKringle]

High Court of the South Pacific

Notice of Reception

Let this serve as notice that this petition has been received by the High Court and has been assigned the following identifying information:

Docket Number
2403.HR

Reference Name
Review of the Rejection of Siberian Districts’ Citizenship Application

Request
Citizenship Rejection Appeal

---

Submission: 15 February 2024

[Belschaft]

High Court of the South Pacific

[2403.HR] Review of the Rejection of Siberian Districts’ Citizenship Application

Whereas this Court has been asked to exercise the judicial power vested in it by Article VIII of the Charter of the South Pacific, it is resolved that this case is justiciable and will be considered for resolution by a panel of two justices.

Associate Justice Belschaft has been assigned as the primary Justice for this case, with Associate Justice Griffindor as the secondary Justice.

The petitioner and interested parties may submit arguments with their views on this case no later than 2024-02-29T12:00:00Z, but the Court reserves the right to issue an opinion before then.

---

Submission: 15 Feb 2024 | Determination: 19 Feb 2024

[KrisKringle]

Your Honour,
I hereby notify the Court that I intend to submit a brief for consideration within the allotted time and ideally within the present week.

[Belschaft]

So noted.

[Belschaft]

High Court of the South Pacific
Court Order

[2403.HR] Review of the Rejection of Siberian Districts’ Citizenship Application

Whereas this Court is vested by Article 3, Section 5 of the Judicial Act with the power to compel individuals and institutions to provide information, it is resolved that the Council on Regional Security (CRS) and the Citizenship Committee (CitCom) are hereby compelled to provide the following information in camera to the Court:

• Transcripts of any and all discussions between members of the CRS relating to the rejection of Siberian Districts’ Citizenship Application for Citizenship
• Transcripts of any and all discussions between members of the CitCom relating to the rejection of Siberian Districts’ Citizenship Application for Citizenship
• Transcripts of any and all discussions between the CRS and CitCom relating to the rejection of Siberian Districts’ Citizenship Application for Citizenship
• All evidence obtained by the CRS to support their designation of Siberian Districts as a security threat, with sources and methods redacted as appropriate

The Council on Regional Security and the Citizenship Committee must provide thier answers no later than 2024-02-25T12:00:00Z.

---

Issued: 20 Feb 2024

[Belschaft]

The Court thanks the Council on Regional Security and the Citizenship Committee for providing requested transcripts and is actively considering them. We may have additional questions for either body or the applicant in the coming days.

[tsunamy]

Forgive the tardiness of this question, but Bel, given your closeness to the situation, which involved shepherding the delegacy to me as a resolution to the situation, is it appropriate for you to be ruling on questions around Siberian’s application?

[KrisKringle]

Brief Amicus Curiae

Your Honour and may it please the Court,

I will argue in this brief that the Court should sustain the rejection of Siberian Districts’ citizenship application. To this effect I will explain why I believe the Court should adopt a rational basis standard when reviewing challenges to decisions on citizenship applications, and I will then explain why, under any standard of review, the rejection was a lawful and proper exercise of the Citizenship Committee and the Council on Regional Security’s discretionary powers.

I. The Court should adopt a rational basis standard

Charter VII.4 grants the Court the power to “declare any (…) official act of government (…) void upon a determination that it violates the terms of [the Charter]” (Charter VII.4). Insofar as the Charter does say the former, I will be the first to concede that the Court has full authority to consider challenges to the rejection of a citizenship application. I do contest, however, that the Court should give broad deference to the discretion of the Citizenship Committee and the Council on Regional Security, and limit its review to whether the rejection was a rational exercise of government power that did not inherently violate any rights or constitutional laws.

Citizenship Act 1.1 says that the Citizenship Committee “is responsible for granting and revoking the citizenship of members” (Citizenship Act 1.1), establishing it as the primary institution involved in the citizenship process. Citizenship Act 2.1 regulates the requirements to obtain citizenship and complements 1.1 by providing a more comprehensive listing of the primary institutions tasked with participating in the applications process.

(1) Members of the Coalition are eligible to become citizens if:

1. the Citizenship Committee does not opine that they are seeking citizenship in bad faith;
2. they are not attempting to join with multiple nations or identities; and
3. they are not considered by the Council on Regional Security to be a significant risk to regional security.

Citizenship Act 2.1a grants to the Citizenship Committee the power to determine whether an applicant is seeking citizenship in “bad faith”, while Citizenship Act 2.1c grants to the Council on Regional Security the power to determine whether an applicant presents a “significant risk to regional security”. There are no qualifications or guidance within the Citizenship Act on what constitutes bad faith or being a significant risk to regional security, leaving it to each of the aforementioned institutions to make that determination based on their best use of their knowledge and experience. It would be reasonable to read the Citizenship Act as expecting both institutions to act not merely as ministerial entities but rather as specialist entities who must exercise discretion, based on their knowledge and experience, to decide whether an applicant may, if granted citizenship, damage the region in any way.

If the Citizenship Committee and the Council on Regional Security have broad discretion to assess the suitability of citizen applicants on account of the specialist knowledge that they bring to the application process then the role of the Court cannot be seen as one of substantive review, but rather as that of a guarantor of rights. There is no doubt that the Court can and should consider whether any rights were violated, and certainly whether the application was rejected despite a lack of evidence, but anything beyond that, such as evaluating the sufficiency of the evidence considered by these primary institutions, would place the Court in a role that the Citizenship Act reserved for other entities.

The Court, knowledgeable and fair though it may be, does not have the specialist knowledge and experience to adequately consider whether the evidence shows that an applicant comes in bad faith or presents a significant risk to regional security. To the extent that the region does have institutions with such expertise, the Court ought to circumscribe its review to whether the Committee and Council acted rationally -that is, whether they considered evidence and followed a reasonable process according to law- and allow the primary institutions, as designated in the Citizenship Act, to exercise their discretion as provided in regional law.

II. The Court should sustain the application’s rejection

While the Court should, as argued above, adopt a rational basis standard, one is not necessary for it to decide that the application was lawfully rejected. Indeed, the Council on Regional Security acted within its discretionary authority in deciding that Siberian Districts presents a significant risk to regional security.

Siberian Districts is a member of the Brotherhood of Malice (BoM), as disclosed in their application (Siberian Districts, 2024), and while petitioner argues that BoM is not a proscribed region this is not relevant to the case. There is no provision in the Citizenship Act that limits the status of “significant risk to regional security” to members of proscribed regions, or indeed even mentions proscribed regions. It follows that an applicant can be a significant risk to regional security without being in a proscribed region, or due to actions or motives unconnected to a proscribed region.

There is however a more significant reason why Siberian Districts is a significant risk to regional security, which is the fact that they were the Minister of the Army during the 2016 attempted coup d’ètat, and therefore a senior figure in the so-called Transitional Government of the South Pacific. Siberian Districts was elected to lead the regional military but instead stood by a concerted attempt at the highest echelons of power to expel political opponents from the region and unlawfully dissolve the Coalition. In other words, Siberian Districts participated in the ultimate act of betrayal against the region.

The argument will be made that the Assembly granted amnesty to all involved in the 2016 attempted coup d’ètat, and while may have been true at one point it beyond certainty no longer the case.

Siberian Districts was granted amnesty by Assembly Resolution to Restore the Coalition of the South Pacific B2 via the following provision:

2. All individuals involved in the forum move and the Transitional Government will receive a general amnesty for their actions, conditional on good behaviour and acknowledgement of culpability, and revocable by the Assembly at any time during the next six months.

This amnesty was granted with two conditions: that the beneficiary behave well and acknowledge their culpability, and that the Assembly could revoke the amnesty at any time within the following six months (Assembly Resolution, 2016). I would contest that a cursory review of forum posts showed no clear acknowledgement of culpability but I will grant that said acknowledgement could have been made elsewhere.

Even if Siberian Districts met the first condition, the Assembly, constituted at the time as the 2016 Great Council, did revoke the amnesty less than five months later via its passage of the 2016 Great Council Continuing Resolution, whose very first article says that “all previous laws of the Coalition will no longer have any legal force” (Assembly Resolution, 2016). If any argument is made that the Assembly Resolution to Restore the Coalition of the South Pacific is a resolution, not a law, it should be noted that the resolution refers to itself as a law in its section C2, which says that “this law shall be held to the same standards of voting and passage as an amendment to the Charter” (Continuing Resolution, 2016).

To the extent that Siberian Districts’ amnesty was revoked and no longer has any legal force, the Council on Regional Security is fully within its rights under Citizenship Act 2.1c to consider their participation as a senior figure in the 2016 attempted coup d’ètat as cause for them to present a “significant risk to regional security”.

For the foregoing reasons, the Court should sustain the rejection.

Footnotes and References

1. Charter of the South Pacific (2024). The MATT-DUCK Law Archive.

2. Citizenship Act (2023). The MATT-DUCK Law Archive.

3. Siberian Districts (2024). Siberian (Siberian Districts). Retrieved from Siberian (Siberian Districts).

4. Assembly of the South Pacific (2016). Assembly Resolution to Restore the Coalition of the South Pacific. Retrieved from Assembly Resolution on the Restoration of the Coalition of the South Pacific.

5. 2016 Great Council (2016). 2016 Great Council Continuing Resolution. Retrieved from https://tspforums.xyz/thread-4119.html.

[Siberian]

Well now that’s just a bummer.

Footnotes

1. Kringalia’s sustained rejection of [2403.HR] Review of the Rejection of Siberian Districts’ Citizenship Application.

[KrisKringle]

In case there is any confusion, either from Siberian Districts or any member of the public, I feel compelled to note that per the determination of admissibility Justices Belschaft and Griffindor are presiding over this case so any contribution on my part is that of an outside party and has no formal bearing on the opinion that the Court may issue.

[Belschaft]

I have discussed this with Griffindor in his capacity as the secondary Justice, and do not believe that there are grounds for my recusal.

1. As I am neither a member of the Committee for Regional Security (CRS) or the Citizenship Committee (CitCom) I have no involvement in the decision under review and thus no conflict of interest.

2. As I have, to the best of my recollection, had no interaction with Siberian Districts whatsoever in the period 2016-2024 prior to the denial of his Citizenship application there is no personal relationship which could impact my objectivity.

3. Whilst I was a member of The South Pacific during the events of the 2016 Cabinet Coup/Constitutional Crisis (2016 CC/CC) and involved in said events, this is the case of many individuals, including members of the Committee for Regional Security (CRS) who were involved in the determination that Siberian Districts is a significant risk to regional security under the Article 2.C of the Citizenship Act. Due to the small size of TSP’s community it is inevitable that individuals will find themselves exercising judgement over matters where they had some prior involvement.

[Belschaft]

High Court of the South Pacific
Court Order

[2403.HR] Review of the Rejection of Siberian Districts’ Citizenship Application

Whereas this Court is vested by Article 3, Section 5 of the Judicial Act with the power to compel individuals and institutions to answer questions, it is resolved that the Council on Regional Security is hereby compelled to answer the following questions:

1. Would the CRS consider other members of the Brotherhood of Malice (BOM) to constitute a significant risk to regional security under the provisions of Article 2.C of the Citizenship Act, or were there specific elements of Siberian Districts involvement within BOM which led to that determination which would not apply to other members of the organisation?

2. If the CRS considers membership of the Brotherhood of Malice (BOM) incompatible with Citizenship under the provisions Article 2.C of the Citizenship Act, why has it not established such a prohibition under under the provisions of the Proscription Act?

3. Would Siberian Districts have been refused Citizenship under the provisions Article 2.C of the Citizenship Act solely on the basis of the membership of the Brotherhood of Malice (BOM) if they had not been involved in the events of the 2016 Cabinet Coup/Constitutional Crisis?

The Council on Regional Security must provide its answer no later than 2024-03-04T00:00:00Z.

---

Issued: 26 Feb 2024

[Sandaoguo]

Brief Amicus Curiae

---

Your Honors and may it please the Court,

I write this in my individual capacity and not on behalf of the entire Council on Regional Security. Based on the last questions posed about proscription, I believe the Court may be preparing to make a grave legal error.

Proscription and denial of citizenship are two completely separate processes under law, created for different purposes. When the government issues a proscription on an individual or organization, they’re determining that the target is hostile to the Coalition to a level where their very presence in Coalition territory (our region, offshoot regions, etc.) or off-site venues (Discord/forums) poses an extreme threat to regional security.

On the other hand, the Citizenship Act contains its own provisions on security reviews for applicants, where in the Council on Regional Security reviews how much of a risk to regional security an applicant poses. If a risk is found, then the applicant doesn’t become a citizen, but isn’t removed from the region or off-site venues altogether. The Assembly explicitly did not limit this review to individuals under one or more proscriptions via the Proscription Act. The Assembly also used purposeful language with “security risk”, compared to the use of “security threat” in the Proscription Act. There is a long history in the Coalition of differentiating between these two phrases, where a risk describes the likelihood of an outcome and a threat describes the immediate danger of an outcome.

Siberian Districts is a member of the Brotherhood of Malice. This is a raider group that was founded on perpetrating coup d’états in Game-Created Regions via infiltration and espionage. Siberian Districts’ most prominent activity within the Coalition was perpetrating a coup d’état. The logic concluding that there’s a risk to security anytime a member of the Brotherhood of Malice enters any region is fairly straightforward. That Siberian Districts actually helped overthrow the Coalition once before graduates that risk to “significant” status, if it wasn’t already before.

Whether or not the Brotherhood of Malice should be proscribed is a political question that Court should not be asking, as it’s not their prerogative to tell the other branches of government what policies they should implement. Nor should the Court be usurping the roles of the legislative, executive and security branches to make those policies itself. The Council on Regional Security, by request of the Citizenship Committee, reviewed Siberian Districts’ current membership in the Brotherhood of Malice, took into context his history of violence against the Coalition, and came to a reasonable conclusion that there exists a significant risk that he would repeat his actions again.

This notion that a grant of amnesty in 2016 erases Siberian Districts’ history is an unreasonable and illogical legal fiction. Amnesty doesn’t rewrite the universe’s timeline. It prevented the government from pursuing a criminal trial for the individual act of participating in the 2016 coup d’état. It did not, and does not under any circumstances, prevent the government from considering the history as context when making contemporary security, civil, or administrative decisions. To give an analogy, if I were to get caught running a billion-dollar pyramid scheme but be granted amnesty, doesn’t mean financial regulators can’t take into account my history of fraud when deciding if I should be allowed to open a new investment firm.

For the Court to think otherwise would be a grave legal error and an even worse error for the future of clemency in the Coalition. If the Court prevents the government from making obvious and reasonable decisions to protect the region, because it interprets an amnesty as a divine rewriting of history, then the government may just question if the Court’s judgment is compatible with maintaining regional security at all.

Thank you.

[Siberian]

I’d like to add some further pieces of information about my involvement in the 2016 coup that I believe are important for context and to establish that this is not an “obvious and reasonable decision”, especially in the name of regional security.

My involvement in the coup was negligible. The SPSF, to my best recollection, was not mobilized under my command to return and endorse Hileville, nor did I vote in favor of this coup taking place. My involvement, and later planned defection, had no impact on the success or the failure of the Cabinet coup and can be summed up to abstaining to vote and chatter in Cabinet channels.

Abstention Screenshots

In response to a region-wide telegram by Hileville claiming this coup to be a unanimous decision by TSP’s cabinet.

Kringalia was going through and unendorsing all Cabinet members. Following an endorsement by him, I telegrammed him and asked if this was intentional considering his previous unendorsements.

In response to Kringalia asking to join the SPSF and my creation of a private SPSF for future SPSF mobilization.

(Screenshots are cobbled together from my sent folder, I don’t have Postmaster General so telegrams sent to me aren’t saved).

I am not arguing that this makes my actions excusable or acceptable, but that these actions should be taken into context on when deciding if the claim that I am a significant risk to regional security is legitimate or not.

@Sandaoguo

The logic concluding that there’s a risk to security anytime a member of the Brotherhood of Malice enters any region is fairly straightforward.

I struggle to understand what the logic of this might be, with the only true risk being upsetting overreaching MGC regions. Joining and participating in a government, especially with my membership in BoM known, poses no credible threat whatsoever. Has any raid been started by entering a region and then announcing you’re apart of a raider region? Digging back to the OFO coup has little relevancy with the current Malice M.O, nor does that feel like anything but a way to draw parallels between their actions in 2013, versus mine in 2016- which when looking deeper than them both being coups in a game created region, do not exist.

@Sandaoguo

To give an analogy, if I were to get caught running a billion-dollar pyramid scheme but be granted amnesty, doesn’t mean financial regulators can’t take into account my history of fraud when deciding if I should be allowed to open a new investment firm.

To make this analogy more apt, I would change the premise to “if I was involved in a large group of people that ran a billion-dollar pyramid scheme, then began coordinating with the federal government before it got taken down, would financial regulators permit me to join an established company at the ground level?”

[HumanSanity]

Your honors,

We will answer each question asked of the CRS in turn.

@Belschaft

Would the CRS consider other members of the Brotherhood of Malice (BOM) to constitute a significant risk to regional security under the provisions of Article 2.C of the Citizenship Act, or were there specific elements of Siberian Districts involvement within BOM which led to that determination which would not apply to other members of the organisation?

Membership in the Brotherhood of Malice alone does not, by default, make an applicant a security risk subject to rejection under Article 2.C of the Citizenship Act. It may raise suspicion, but in our current assessment of the security risk posed by BOM membership that suspicion only triggers a security risk under Article 2.C in the presence of other aggravating factors from the history of the applicant, their character, strengths, or intelligence. The Court will note that the transcripts provided by the Council in camera for the Court’s review reflect this understanding.

For Siberian Districts specifically, these aggravating factors include:

1. Siberian Districts’ involvement in the 2016 Cabinet coup, and
2. Siberian Districts’ use of a TSP flag on a BoM operation to mock the Coalition and attempt to strain its foreign relations (applying the flag to a nation titled ‘TNP Security Officer’ that was a ‘regional officer’ in an occupation).

Further evidence of this has become apparent since the CRS announced the rejection of Siberian Districts’ citizenship application. After the major update of February 27, the Brotherhood of Malice posted a gameplay report referring to “[o]ne of the Brotherhood’s assassins [who] had been recently maligned by a representative of The South Pacific” here. This framing clearly shows that Siberian Districts is thought of as one of the Brotherhood’s own as if they were doing business with the South Pacific, rather than someone attempting to engage with the South Pacific on their own standing as a potential citizen.

@Belschaft

If the CRS considers membership of the Brotherhood of Malice (BOM) incompatible with Citizenship under the provisions Article 2.C of the Citizenship Act, why has it not established such a prohibition under under the provisions of the Proscription Act?

The Proscription Act lays out specific acts that constitute an “act of aggression” and can result in proscription. While BoM has committed many acts that create concerns about a BoM member’s good faith intent to engage in TSP, none of these actions have in the past resulted in a proscription. Examples of these include:

• Ordering the infiltration of the South Pacific’s treaty partner Balder through Operation Ragnarok. Since Balder was considered a non-aggression pact partner at the time and not a treatied mutual defense ally, this was not a proscribable act, but was one which triggers concern for BoM members’ interest in the welfare of the South Pacific and its friends.
• Invading The North Pacific to displace its lawfully elected Delegate, alongside members of the People’s Revolutionary Armed Forces. While The North Pacific is not a treatied ally of the South Pacific anymore, the two regions are united recently in a political and military effort against BoM, and share an embassy and historical connections. This invasion led treatied allies Europeia, 10000 Islands, and The League to declare war against BoM. Due to the South Pacific’s mutual defense agreements with each of these regions, BoM has a vested interest in actions which are counter to the welfare of the South Pacific.
• Invading the South Pacific’s then-embassy partner South Pacific and current embassy partner Europe. When invading Europe, BoM was able to eject over half of the membership of a region governed by the rule of law and shared democratic norms with the South Pacific.

Each of these actions constitutes an active aggression against a current diplomatic partner of the South Pacific with whom we share some or all of democratic values, cultural ties, and political/military objectives. While they do not rise to the level of a proscription, they do create reason that someone’s membership in BoM is cause for suspicion about their intentions in the South Pacific, although it is not on its own damning.

@Belschaft

Would Siberian Districts have been refused Citizenship under the provisions Article 2.C of the Citizenship Act solely on the basis of the membership of the Brotherhood of Malice (BOM) if they had not been involved in the events of the 2016 Cabinet Coup/Constitutional Crisis?

No. Any rejection involving membership in BoM would also examinea ccompanying aggravating factors. BoM membership would not be the sole deciding factor.

[Siberian]

@HumanSanity

1. Siberian Districts’ use of a TSP flag on a BoM operation to mock the Coalition and attempt to strain its foreign relations (applying the flag to a nation titled ‘TNP Security Officer’ that was a ‘regional officer’ in an occupation).

Further evidence of this has become apparent since the CRS announced the rejection of Siberian Districts’ citizenship application. After the major update of February 27, the Brotherhood of Malice posted a gameplay report referring to “[o]ne of the Brotherhood’s assassins [who] had been recently maligned by a representative of The South Pacific” here. This framing clearly shows that Siberian Districts is thought of as one of the Brotherhood’s own as if they were doing business with the South Pacific, rather than someone attempting to engage with the South Pacific on their own standing as a potential citizen.

The report by Devious was in relation to my aforementioned “TNP Security Officer” puppet getting deleted for copyright infringement for using the TSP flag on that puppet. This issue is solely related to the copyright holder/person who GHR’d the puppet and not the Coalition as a whole.

To argue that the decision to place the South Pacific’s flag on a nation named after the North Pacific is mockery or an attempt to strain foreign relations is absurd. If the puppet was named TEP Security Officer the flag would’ve been the West Pacific; there is nothing more to this than the opposite being funny.

[Silva]

@Siberian

To argue that the decision to place the South Pacific’s flag on a nation named after the North Pacific is mockery or an attempt to strain foreign relations is absurd.

The action of using a flag from another region, especially a defending region, during an invasion is nothing more than mockery. There is no reason to use our flag other than the aforementioned reason: to mock.
Not only did you mock a symbol of the Coalition, the flag, but you also used the name of another region, therefore mocking it as well. You disrespected and misused a symbol of the Coalition, has an active participation in invasions and participated in a coup in the region, and now you come to apply for citizenship and request review from the High Court because of the refusal. An interesting case to say the least.

[HumanSanity]

Your honors,

I am requesting the recusal of Justice Belschaft from this case pursuant to Article 3(3) of the Judicial Act.

@coco

(3) Any member of the South Pacific may request the recusal of the assigned justice at any time, which will be reviewed by the High Court. If granted, the High Court will assign another justice.

Justice Belschaft’s assignment to this case has always been suspect, given the role that he played in the 2016 coup. The potential security risks of Siberian Districts’ conduct during that coup is a central question in that case. However, I chose not to request Belschaft’s recusal previously, given the history of constructive engagement and service he has had to the High Court.

Circumstances have changed because of Belschaft’s recent comments on ProfessorHenn’s proposed [2411.AB] Resolution to Restore Regional Accountability.

While Belschaft is entitled to share his thoughts as a legislator in the Assembly on any question, including this one, two specific parts of what Belschaft publicly stated render him unsuitable to hear this case.

First, Belschaft clearly frames the Assembly resolution, which he states opposition to, as in opposition to a potential direction of ruling the High Court could pursue. (A premise which, I will note, is not an inherent “given” and seems legally debatable.) I will quote Legislator Belschaft directly, with emphasis added:

@Belschaft

His assertion is currently subject to a case in the High Court, which may or may not sustain it but acting as if this is fact is grossly premature.

More broadly, this is very clearly written with reference to an active Court case and on the basis of seeking to invalidate a potential ruling if the Court finds in a manner that the authors don’t agree with. The problem with that is the Court can’t do it’s job if people try to amend the law under review during a case, as it throws the whole matter into confusion. And in this case - and I cannot emphasise this enough - the Court has not actually issued a ruling and no one (outside of Griffindor and myself) knows what the ruling is going to be. It’s still being drafted.

Second, Belschaft clearly states that one of the arguments made by Kris Kringle in an amicus brief in this very Court case has “no legal basis whatsoever”. Quoting again, with emphasis added.

@Belschaft

To start with, Kris’ recent assertion that the Assembly Resolution to Restore the Coalition of the South Pacific was repealed is just that - an assertion - with no legal basis whatsoever.

A Justice cannot impartially rule in a case where they have already spoken in the Assembly on the outcome of one of the legal points raised. This is especially the case when they not only cast doubt on a possible legal interpretation but state emphatically that the legal interpretation is “with no legal basis whatsoever”.

If Justice Belschaft cannot separate his preconceived opinions about Siberian Districts, the 2016 Cabinet Coup, the subsequent amnesty vote and its legal validity, and current legislative debates, then it is unacceptable for him to be a presiding Justice in this case.

[Griffindor]

High Court of the South Pacific

---

[2403.HR] Review of the Rejection of Siberian Districts’ Citizenship Application

This Court has been petitioned under Article 3, Section 3 of the Judicial Act to request the recusal of the presiding Justice, Belschaft, from the case. The non-recused Justices, Griffindor and Pronoun, have determined that a recusal of the presiding justice is not warranted, and the request for recusal is hereby denied.

It is the opinion of the remaining justices that the presiding justice did not demonstrate a violation of impartiality that would impact the outcome of the case based on the facts presented. While it would have been preferable for the presiding justice to remain neutral until the case’s conclusion, it is still their right as a legislator to debate within the Assembly. Further, the Court would like to remind the petitioner that the secondary justice must also sign off on any opinion issued by the Court. This sign-off is not a formality but a thorough review of the facts of the case and the soundness of the opinion contained therein.

---

Submission: 16 Feb 2024 | Determination: 19 Feb 2024