A More Perfect Judiciary (DLC or game mechanic overhaul idea)

[Cal]

A More Perfect Judiciary

Hi everyone! I believe that currently, the Judiciary is the least fleshed out part of the game, the one that is the least fun to be a part of, and quite frankly the one that has the least realistic elements to it. SC Justices come out of nowhere, the SC is not even nominally independent of political control, and there’s just not much to do with the judicial branch. I think we have a LOT of potential here. The ideas below are tailored towards being more basic and without a full array of features so that V could choose to incorporate some elements into the game without a DLC if he wanted to. 

The basic elements of this expansion are Judicial Philosophies and Focus Courts. A major change would be that the Supreme Court and/or Focus Courts are no longer directly controlled by players, but that nominees' potential votes on important cases can be somewhat predicted based on their Judicial Philosophy. 

Full disclaimer: these are just spitball ideas of mine and are not currently intended to be in the game on release or in the future.

A. Judicial Philosophy

The political divisions of American politics don’t translate incredibly well to the judiciary. For example, there are plenty of examples of justices who are considered on the opposite side of the political spectrum concurring in one another’s judgment, even in the dissent, and decisions are (usually) made with considerations to judicial doctrine. Judicial Philosophy is clearly separate from Personal Ideology. As such, I think that it would be fitting for that to be represented in the game. 

Judicial Philosophy is composed of their more broad Judicial Ideology and their Judicial Doctrine. Their Judicial Ideology is a more broad sense of where the Justice lies on the court, and is a simple Conservative-Swing-Liberal scale. 

Judicial Philosophy is hidden when a politician first enters the game. Accordingly, it may be a gamble to nominate someone to the Supreme Court that has never been in the judiciary before – they and their values are unknown to both you and the nation. However, a statesman’s Judicial Philosophy is revealed in the following ways… 

1. The statesman graduates from the Judicial Career Track. The State Judicial Career Track is renamed to the Judicial Career Track to create a more realistic portrayal of our American court system. A statesman graduating from this track was clerking for judges right out of law school, made it to the bench themselves one day, and is now an influential and well-known factor in either the state system or their federal district/circuit court whose opinions can be predicted before they’re even nominated. (This covers most Justices IRL)

2. The statesman is appointed to a Focus Court. I’ll have more on Focus Courts later, but this covers a judge who did not make it through the Judicial Career Track but nonetheless has obtained relevance, as well as a judge who is appointed as a part of a patronage scheme, luck, or previously unrealized talent. Their opinions are influential and analyzed on a national scale. 

3. The statesman is appointed directly to the Supreme Court. This is more uncommon, but has happened before. A statesman appointed this way is a gamble for the player because there has been relatively little scrutiny of them and their judicial philosophy. A statesman with no prior judicial experience, or so little to have never reached relevance before, could easily blow up in the player’s face. However, this is also likely the only way you’re going to get Justices under the age of 45 on the court reliably. 

A1. Judicial Ideology

Nominating an unknown to the Court can be a big risk. So, it’s a good thing that you can take a good look at what IS publicly available when making the decision of whether or not you want to take that 25 year old peewee draftee directly to the Supreme Court. You can make an educated guess based on their Personal Ideology, Interests, and Traits. These things together, with the element of chance, allow you to have a good idea of the kind of Judge it is that you’re appointing for life. Personal Ideology is what determines the base chance for a new judge to hold one of the three Judicial Ideologies, and this is then modified by interests and traits by +- more percentages. 

Of course, you’re probably asking yourself – what happens if that makes the total percentages no longer 100%? Well, a CPU version of the game can very easily scale 126% or 75% down or up with a simple formula. There admittedly might be a more user-friendly way to do it, however. Open to ideas!

RW Populists
90% base chance to be Conservative.
10% base chance to be Swing.
0% base chance to be Liberal.

Traditionalists
80% base chance to be Conservative.
20% base chance to be Swing.
0% base chance to be Liberal.

Conservatives
70% base chance to be Conservative.
30% base chance to be Swing.
0% base chance to be Liberal.

Moderates
15% base chance to be Conservative.
70% base chance to be Swing.
15% base chance to be Liberal.

Liberals
70% base chance to be Liberal.
30% base chance to be Swing.
0% base chance to be Conservative.

Progressives
80% base chance to be Liberal.
20% base chance to be Swing.
0% base chance to be Conservative.

LW Populists
90% base chance to be Liberal.
10% base chance to be Swing.
0% base chance to be Conservative.

Trait Modifiers:

LW Activist: +25% Liberal.
RW Activist: +25% Conservative.
Pliable: +50% Swing.
Lackey: +50% in the direction of their Kingmaker, if one is currently active.
Puritan: -50% Swing.

A2. Judicial Doctrine

Not only is the general ideology of a particular judge important in how they hold in a particular case, but the specifics of the case before them as it applies to certain beliefs of theirs. For example, Justice Scalia was a famous proponent of Originalism, oftentimes joining a liberal minority on the court in his dissent for grounds unrelated to political beliefs. 

Attempting to capture the entirety of the discourse of what semantic or textual canons to apply, when delegation is appropriate, and whatnot is not feasible for a game not focused on the judiciary (probably). However, giving every Justice one of two of the following Judicial Doctrines would be broad enough to cover the impact on several significant decisions. If this were to be expanded into a full-blown expansion, this could be the basis for a diverging timeline of the court’s opinions and have flavor text for when a particular composition of the court reaches a decision. 

To keep it simple, I would just have certain cases have modifiers for the following traits that add on to their chance to vote either with the ayes or the nays.

 

B. Focus Courts

The other huge change here would be the addition of Focus Courts, or a small number of federal appellate courts that have significant influence on the judicial landscape. They represent the lower courts that cases appealed to the Supreme Court are heard in before they actually make it there. 

IRL, some courts have had incredibly influence. For example, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has had a huge impact on public policy and cases heard by the court have established precedent in administrative law, and several high profile Supreme Court cases came out of it with famous butting heads between Judge Bazelon and Judge Wright. Some of the most well respected and brilliant figures in American legal history never served on the Supreme Court, but instead on a lower court with very influential decisions.

While it would be cool to be able to represent full appellate courts, that’s not realistic with the low number of judges we have in the game. However, I think it would be possible to give each region a Focus Court representing a very influential judge at the time. At the start of the game, this would give us 4 Focus Courts, representing New-England, the Mid-Atlantic, Upper South, and Deep South. 

A Focus Court has only a single judge on it, appointed by the President and serving until retirement. This Focus Judge faces confirmation, just like a Supreme Court Justice does. However, rules should probably be a little relaxed about opposition as IRL their appointment is generally scrutinized less. It is common for lower court judges confirmed by the Senate to lose votes, sometimes even from the same senators, when they are nominated for the Supreme Court. 

A Focus Court Judge has a chance of improving their Judicial Ability upon appointment. Additionally, through other interactions such as when the Supreme Court takes up their case, a Focus Court Judge can gain a few other traits that make them useful on the Supreme Court.

1B. Jurisdiction and Interaction Between Focus Courts and the Supreme Court

What kinds of cases does the Focus Court hear, and what does the Supreme Court hear?
While before all cases would just appear before the Supreme Court, that will no longer be the case. This division is caused by jurisdiction, the concept that a court can only make decisions on the kinds of cases that it has been granted the authority from Congress or the Constitution to hear. 

The Supreme Court has an exclusive Original Jurisdiction, and cases tagged with that subject matter will always come straight to the Supreme Court and cannot be heard by a Focus Court. The Supreme Court cannot be the first court to hear cases that do not have Original Jurisdiction.

However, the Supreme Court also has Appellate Jurisdiction. Appellate Jurisdiction is the authority of the Supreme Court to hear all other subject matters from state courts and federal courts when they are appealed up the court system. Cases tagged with Appellate Jurisdiction will usually come from Focus Courts, but have a chance to come to the Supreme Court without it. (Simulating that not every lower federal court is represented in the game.)

Focus Courts (like the Supreme Court) are mostly insulated from the player’s control once confirmed and make their decision on a case independently. The Focus Judge’s Judicial Philosophy determines the chance they decide aye or nay on the case. 

After the Focus Court has delivered its decision, it is up to the Supreme Court to decide if they will grant cert (hear) to the case. IRL, this process is called the Rule of Four, where if 4 of the 9 Justices on the Supreme Court want to hear a case, it is added to the Supreme Court’s docket. As only the most influential Supreme Court cases are represented in the game (as of the time I’m writing this) it should be rare that the Supreme Court decides not to grant cert, but possible based on who appointed each justice, their traits, and their Judicial Philosophy. 

If the Supreme Court grants cert, the case is heard like normal. However, Party Leaders with Manipulative, Iron Fist, and Jurisprudence should maybe have a chance to interfere. Either way, the Supreme Court will either affirm the Focus Court’s decision or reverse it. 

What happens after the Supreme Court decides the case, or the SC does not grant cert?

The points awarded for the SC Justices and general impact of the SC Case do not change whether the Court reverses or affirms the decision of the Focus Court. To be absolutely clear: there is no effect on the overall point distribution or meter effects if the court reverses the decision. What actually matters is if the Court ruled aye or nay on the case.

If the Supreme Court chooses not to hear the case, points and effects are calculated as if the Focus Judge’s decision was that of the Supreme Court, except SC Justices do not receive points. The Focus Judge will also receive points for setting down important case law since the Supreme Court did not step in.

A Focus Judge whose opinion is affirmed by the Supreme Court has a small chance of gaining Jurisprudence. If the Supreme Court denies cert (refuses to hear) a Landmark case from a Focus Court, the Supreme Court loses points. 

A Focus Judge authoring a decision that deducts the most points from the President who appointed them’s faction, while they are still in the presidential office, causes a dice roll for the President’s faction enthusiasm lowering due to discontent with their appointment.

(Note: This ignores that cases from state Supreme Courts have a totally different kind of jurisdiction than do federal appellate courts. However, unless we want to have some kind of system for modeling state Supreme Court’s through either Judicial Career Track statesmen or unemployed judicial ability statesmen, that’s unfeasible and this is the best I can come up with. I think anything else might run into the issue of not having the statesmen to actually do it, haha). 

 

Edited April 12, 2022 by Cal

[vcczar]

10 hours ago, Cal said:

A More Perfect Judiciary

Yeah, this is something that would have to be in AMPU 2 or something. What I could do is this: 

• Allow a chance a SC justice shifts their ideology
• Take the SC away from the players and make them run by the CPU.... @ConservativeElector2 probably won't like this. Might make an option to allow players to play as the court, but make the default off. 
• Judicial Activism would be a justice with LW Activism...I could add more rules for this
• Originalism would be a justice with RW Activism.....I could add more rules for this. 

[ConservativeElector2]

43 minutes ago, vcczar said:

• Take the SC away from the players and make them run by the CPU.... @ConservativeElector2 probably won't like this. Might make an option to allow players to play as the court, but make the default off. 

Yeah, I don't like this particular part. As an option it's fine but not as the definitive state. My personal interest aside, I also think it's one of the main selling points to have created a game in which the otherwise neglected Judiciary finally plays a role (this could a ttract law school students as well).

43 minutes ago, vcczar said:

• Allow a chance a SC justice shifts their ideology

That's a good one. Just take Justice Souter as an example.

[vcczar]

@MrPotatoTed I'll probably make some changes to the SC rules either today or tomorrow based on what I said above. Will also make something that has Justices shift ideology over time. 

[ConservativeElector2]

@Cal I especially like your idea of crafting a focus court below the Supreme Court.

[vcczar]

3 minutes ago, ConservativeElector2 said:

@Cal I especially like your idea of crafting a focus court below the Supreme Court.

Definitely an AMPU 2 thing, if it is added at all. Won't be in this AMPU. 

[Edouard]

Great post Cal

It's true that several SC judges changed while being in office, it particulary worked in the liberal way more than the opposed but it is a good data to take.

As for ideology I know three of these in law :

Litteralists : Like Scalia, who stick to the text.

Kind of finalists : Those who try to interpret what was the will of the legislator when he adopted such a law, so it gives the potential openure to an evolution of the text like it is what was done with same sex marriage in 2015 I think, the majority of the Court interpreted the amendment on civil rights and found that the final motive of the legislator was to get a full equality.

And the third is like free interpretators : Those ones barely don't care about what is written or the motive of the legislator, they just adapt the law to the needs of the society whatever it is in their opinion.

[Cal]

12 minutes ago, Edouard said:

Great post Cal

It's true that several SC judges changed while being in office, it particulary worked in the liberal way more than the opposed but it is a good data to take.

As for ideology I know three of these in law :

Litteralists : Like Scalia, who stick to the text.

Kind of finalists : Those who try to interpret what was the will of the legislator when he adopted such a law, so it gives the potential openure to an evolution of the text like it is what was done with same sex marriage in 2015 I think, the majority of the Court interpreted the amendment on civil rights and found that the final motive of the legislator was to get a full equality.

And the third is like free interpretators : Those ones barely don't care about what is written or the motive of the legislator, they just adapt the law to the needs of the society whatever it is in their opinion.

Interesting, I wonder how the language difference affects our terminology here as we are taught those as Textualism, Intentionalism, and Purposivism respectively (capitalized only for fun).

[Edouard]

On 4/12/2022 at 11:28 AM, Cal said:

Interesting, I wonder how the language difference affects our terminology here as we are taught those as Textualism, Intentionalism, and Purposivism respectively (capitalized only for fun).

I think that the three are about the same of the ones I mentionned but in plain english hehe

Edited July 19, 2022 by Edouard

[Cal]

1 hour ago, ConservativeElector2 said:

Yeah, I don't like this particular part. As an option it's fine but not as the definitive state. My personal interest aside, I also think it's one of the main selling points to have created a game in which the otherwise neglected Judiciary finally plays a role (this could a ttract law school students as well).

The issue there is that it's really unrealistic, especially given that legislators are likely to go against your faction, who are directly and openly influenced or even subordinate to your faction leader, while justices, who have (in theory) no accountability to them, by default are completely controlled. It doesn't fit and makes the ideology of your appointee pretty much pointless. 

Even currently, the rule that Puritans must vote for their ideology hasn't been followed, lol.

The current ruleset leads to ludicrous results like Ginsburg being able to vote down gay marriage, or Scalia championing big government schemes. Roberts would never be the swing justice he is IRL as it would make no sense for his player to tell him to vote against his faction. Pretty much all conversion attempts assume that the justice's base decision is whatever the player wants and they just convince other justices of that. It looks okay now, but when you get to cases we're more familiar with it'll become clear it will generate very unrealistic results with judges ruling ahistorically very often. 

[ConservativeElector2]

11 minutes ago, Cal said:

The current ruleset leads to ludicrous results like Ginsburg being able to vote down gay marriage, or Scalia championing big government schemes. Roberts would never be the swing justice he is IRL as it would make no sense for his player to tell him to vote against his faction. 

I don't see why. If you play as Red, it's unlikely for Ginsburg to vote down gay marriage. If you play as blue you wouldn't probably want that outcome and if you, you simply create an ahistorical timeline. That's something everyone has to decide for themselves.

[Cal]

8 minutes ago, ConservativeElector2 said:

I don't see why. If you play as Red, it's unlikely for Ginsburg to vote down gay marriage. If you play as blue you wouldn't probably want that outcome and if you, you simply create an ahistorical timeline. That's something everyone has to decide for themselves.

You would think, right? But let's take a look at the current court composition and how the faction's controlling them would be incentivized to vote on a few key court cases with the current 1960 game.

In Roe v. Wade, the only points awarded are to the player with the Healthcare lobby (if aye) or the player with the Theocrat card (if nay). There is only one faction that will gain or lose points in this case: @pman, with the Public Healthcare lobby that controls 2 justices. Outside of that, players can make whatever decision they want and there is no difference. 

That means, 7 Justices have no incentive to vote one way or the other on such a major case as Roe v. Wade. Even crazier, you can just have your Justice do what's against your faction's wishes through wheeling and dealing with other factions. You could agree to have Scalia vote to legalize abortion nationwide in exchange for a party leadership vote which is wildly unrealistic, and you'll almost certainly have no effect on your points at all from it. 

I want players to have fun with the judiciary, but making it just as political (arguably more than) the legislative part of the game is just unrealistic. The default should be, imo, that the courts are independent. 

[ConservativeElector2]

16 minutes ago, Cal said:

I want players to have fun with the judiciary, but making it just as political (arguably more than) the legislative part of the game is just unrealistic. The default should be, imo, that the courts are independent. 

From my point of view it needs some sort of surprise then. If you know all the votes beforehand it could get boring.

[Cal]

Just now, ConservativeElector2 said:

From my point of view it needs some sort of surprise then. If you know all the votes beforehand it could get boring.

Maybe the best way to do it now, without a significant overhaul more fitting for a DLC, would be for it to be a percentage that Justices rule a certain way on each case when independent based on their ideology or personal interests, instead of faction interest. Someone like Scalia would still almost certainly vote against Roe v. Wade, but his ideology would still have the chance to make some of his opinions that endorsed a more "liberal" (based on the outcome ONLY) result, such as his decisions about governmental overreach of power and violation of the 4th Amendment in marijuana detection or DNA swabbing. 

[vcczar]

@MrPotatoTed Supreme Court decision rules have been partially redone. This will have to do for AMPU 1, barring any major issues in playtesting. I've also made one change to SC appointments. A confirmed SC justice has a 10% chance of immediately shifting their ideology 1 spot to the left or to the right. The SC decision section allows further shifts but only for every 10 years a justice serves. Judges rarely become more conservative, so there's 5% more of a chance a justice moves leftward than rightward. Historically, it's overwhelmingly that justices move to the left rather than to the right, for whatever reason. Nevertheless, the chance for a shift at all is very low. 

[OrangeP47]

Keep in mind, you apparently have a lot of lawyers here.  I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but my degree had a lawyer adjacent stuff, so I sympathies with them.  But you're definitely getting a biased sample here.  I like the improvements, and very, very much want to keep the court in the game, but I wouldn't sweat making it perfect for AMPU 1.  Truth is we've barely seen the court operate in the 1772 playtest.  Not that we shouldn't be scheming improvements now, but I think it'll be fine.

[matthewyoung123]

16 hours ago, OrangeP47 said:

Keep in mind, you apparently have a lot of lawyers here.  I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but my degree had a lawyer adjacent stuff, so I sympathies with them.  But you're definitely getting a biased sample here.  I like the improvements, and very, very much want to keep the court in the game, but I wouldn't sweat making it perfect for AMPU 1.  Truth is we've barely seen the court operate in the 1772 playtest.  Not that we shouldn't be scheming improvements now, but I think it'll be fine.

I think you'll see the SC operate a lot more in a 1960 scenario.  Lots of critical court cases in the 60's-70's.  I like a more independent SC.  I do like the idea that the SC is run by the CPU by default.  And I support Cal's notion that the judiciary should be more independent than either of the other two branches.  Checks & Balances!  

[themiddlepolitical]

On 4/12/2022 at 2:27 PM, vcczar said:

@MrPotatoTed Supreme Court decision rules have been partially redone. This will have to do for AMPU 1, barring any major issues in playtesting. I've also made one change to SC appointments. A confirmed SC justice has a 10% chance of immediately shifting their ideology 1 spot to the left or to the right. The SC decision section allows further shifts but only for every 10 years a justice serves. Judges rarely become more conservative, so there's 5% more of a chance a justice moves leftward than rightward. Historically, it's overwhelmingly that justices move to the left rather than to the right, for whatever reason. Nevertheless, the chance for a shift at all is very low. 

Great change! 

I vote against the running by the CPU by default..I wanna play the SC even though it's p basic rn.