Congressional Ambassadorial Authority Act

[devintheroaster]

Congressional Ambassadorial Authority Act


Category: Charter Amendment


Author: Wileyshire


Chapter I: General Provisions

1. This act may be referred to as the Congressional Ambassadorial Authority Act, the CAA Act or the Crow Act.

2. This act will come into force upon it's passage.

Chapter II: Congressional Ambassadorial Authority Act

1. Bold parts of 2.1.1.3, line 3 will be additions to be added upon the passage of this bill. 

● Ratify or withdraw from an inter-regional treaty, alliance or embassy

Chapter III: Reasoning

1. This is to allow Congress to officially vote to open or close embassies just the same as they can do with other alliances. This will expand the power to Congress as intended in the Charter originally and as Congress should have the right to do. 

[Mauvemarke]

How does this address how the Cabinet currently has authority over the management of embassies?

[devintheroaster]

Apr 15, 2020 2:15:21 GMT Mauvemarke said:

How does this address how the Cabinet currently has authority over the management of embassies?

This bill as written will expand the authority to Congress, allowing both Congress and Cabinet to act on embassies.

[Mauvemarke]

I don't see how this will aid in any potential conflicts. I think the power should be either invested in the Cabinet or in Congress, not in both, considering there's nothing stopping us from going into perpetual opening and reopening.

[Dekks]

The main gripe with my legislation was that it was made harder to open embassies by congress than to close them, not the fact that only Congress would be able to vote on requesting opening embassies or on accepting requests. That said now I think of it the DSA does get alot of requests from regions who only have like 5 nations, so the cabinet should still be able to reject requests that don't conform to basic embassy requirements.

[Mauvemarke]

Whether you believe it should be to the Cabinet or Congress is fine, but both I find too hard to agree to.

[studentloandebt]

Would be annoying to have a bunch of congress notifications to decide if we should open or reject embassy requests from regions with 5 nations.

Really, imagine a vote happening every other week over if the DSA should accept embassy requests from an unknown region that spams embassy requests to every region

[cellefranca]

I like the minimal layout of the amendment, though I think that Mauvemarke has a point. Also Dekks and Student Loan Debt have pointed out that the Cabinet should retain some form of power in the matterof embassies to avoid constant votes about embassy requests from irrelevant regions.
Maybe the legislation ought to be more precise in the conferral of competences. We can do this in different ways:

- keeping the current changes in the proposed amendment + changing "Accepting, rejecting and/or soliciting embassy requests" in "Definitions - Administrative Privileges" to "Accepting, rejecting and/or soliciting embassy requests according to Regional law" + erasing "Establishing embassy criteria and making embassy recommendations to the Cabinet" in the Subsection 2.2.8.2 of the Charter (duties of the MoFA). This of course means that a Regional law should be proposed and discussed on to determine a guideline that should be followed to grant or reject embassies.
It could also be done directly through a Charter Amendment, which however requires a supermajority and thus would be harder to pass -  and since we need some sort of rule for embassies, it would be unwise to wait too much because of the Amendment not attaining a supermajority of votes in favor.
This option of course doesn't give any real power to Cabinet, while avoiding the constant voting on embassy requests. It also defines clearly the conferral of competences. However, it does require a binch of changes to the Charter.

- keeping the current changes in the proposed amendment + erasing "Accepting, rejecting and/or soliciting embassy requests" in "Definitions - Administrative Privileges" and replacing it with "Rejecting embassy requests a priori, by consensus vote within Cabinet and with a public statement about the motives of the decision" + changing "Establishing embassy criteria and making embassy recommendations to the Cabinet" in Subsection 2.2.8.2 of the Charter to "Establishing embassy criteria and making embassy recommendations to the Congress". This would give Cabinet alot of power on embassy requests, but Congress would still retain the ability to vote on embassies and proposing them. There is the possibility that Cabinet may abuse this power, but I think that in that eventuality the Cabinet would risk impeachment if there is just no logical reason behind the rejection of embassies. However, I don't think that is a realistic risk.
In this option the Cabinet (particularly the MoFA) retains its discretionality, whilst making the boundaries of powers between Cabinet and Congress clearer and making Cabinet actions on the matter to be more transparent.

I'd like the Members of Congress to evaluate my proposals and discuss on which is best or if they're both unworkable/undesirable/silly.

[30hosinservan]

As A Nember Of Congress And Representative Of My Nation, I Fully Agree And Would Find Support Here.
Considered His Proposals To Be Good.

[Cacusia]

I like the idea of involving congress more, however I do understand the objections, however it is still a good change.