"Indeed. Some might call it slanderous, implying that the archmage and the Queen did something Evil. We are speaking of surprise unannounced forcible relocation and indefinite-duration conscription, not of something Evil like kidnapping and enslaving people."

It's possible that this would seem like a less ridiculously stupid thing to get people to bitch about if the archmage hadn't already burned down her orphanage and flattened her house, but as it is she feels like this is a pretty stupid thing to bitch about.

Why did they let anyone from Taldor take a title?

Okay, he sees where Bellumar was going with this. It's stupid, unless it works politically in which case it was just moderately annoying, but he hasn't taken leave of his senses. Obviously everyone will vote down the amendment now that the point has been made.

They might kill her just for wishing the government hadn't made her come here?

"Apparently I'm here because you value my input, so: I want to go home. I'm not going to speak another word at this convention that isn't about how I want to go home. I will abstain on every vote that isn't about when I can go home. I suggest other sortitions come up here and say the same."

He did not pay the guy to say that but he really should have thought of it.

"I don't know anything about the sortitioned delegates, but I do know that just yesterday, we passed their ban on slander.

"Everyone on this floor today heard that debate. Every one of you listened as His Highness d'Egorian proposed the slightest exception. Nearly half of you voted against even permitting true statements unconditionally. His Excellency de Cerdanya assured us this was unnecessary. The bill might sound unjust! Nevertheless he assured us that the magistrates would employ their discretion to not try any case where the accused caused no true damages. He stated the Queen's prosecutors were permitted discretion over what cases they would bring. This was supposed to avoid the obvious harms from the minor possible rumors. This was to avoid such obvious foolishness as the Acts of Iomedae being called slanderous for naming Tar-Baphon a lich. To call your enemy a lich would be a scandalous claim in almost every case! Nobody would simply accept this. However, to press such a case would be obviously absurd, and so we were told the magistrates and prosecutors could use their discretion to avoid such over-broad applications of the law.

"His Excellency Bellumar knows the intent of the law as well as any here who were not on that committee. He is the one chairing the committee on the judiciary. He chairs the committee which would set the rules on that discretion. He chairs the committee which constrains the laws we pass to be reasonably interpreted as we intend them, when we go too far with our words.

"Now he tells us that implying the Queen's actions could have been evil is slander.

"Perhaps this is the sort of minor slander which his Excellency de Cerdanya said would be overlooked by the prosecutors. Perhaps it is slander for which no magistrate would charge a fine. Still, he tells us this was 'implying that the archmage and the Queen did something Evil'. The bill we passed but a single day ago imposes penalties up to exile from Cheliax for any who 'clearly and intentionally imply' a scandalous or malicious claim. Is doing something Evil scandalous? Is it malicious? For if so, he tells us his interpretation of the law. He believes that was in fact slander. Will he say otherwise to the judicial system we have tasked him with forming?

"I do not wish to hold anyone here who would not want to be here. Everyone who does wish to be here, though, should consider this record of our recently passed bills. First we passed a ban on slander which they assured us was not to be taken too far, and not even a day later his Excellency Bellumar tells us he believes it applies in the broadest of senses. Was this intentional? Perhaps not! But still it is so. Today a proposal attempts to change the Convention, despite the archmage explicitly banning such action and without stating it in the bill. Even if it is unintended, was such Mephistophelian precision in the reading of every bill not supposed to be left behind with Infernal Cheliax? Yet now we must watch for it with every word in every proposal the floor hears.

"Perhaps we should accept this. Perhaps there is no way to improve things avoid such careful shading of the law, to make a constitution which supports honesty and straightforwardness over deceit and trickery. But now is our only chance to change that for the next four decades, and I would not watch us fail without even making an attempt."

“You must have misheard me, Delegate, as I did not say that the statement that the Queen has acted Evilly was slanderous, but observed only and quite obviously that some people might say it was, and I certainly did not say that this is “not merely slander but slander that should be considered on the floor”. I think our words matter, and choose mine carefully, and I encourage you to in the future try taking notes, or checking with a friend, to confirm you have not misheard me and then repeated something very different than what I said and indeed inappropriate to say.”

In most countries Ferrer's speech would be charged as treason, actually, but that's not a fight worth having on the floor.

This is exactly why her other idea for a proposal is needed.  But she doesn’t want to introduce it now with this context, and she thinks introducing an unrelated proposal while another is already under debate violates what little procedure the convention has.

"Can we, for a moment, pause in our debate about the Good and Law of the government to discuss the proposal in question? Count Bellumar has introduced a law to limit the ability of the enforcers of the law to detain someone without telling him why they are doing it. This seems wholly reasonable to me. We can debate whether or not we should go further, but no arguments have been made for why we should not go this far that are appropriate for the people of a Lawful Good state. My only modification would be to suggest that the last line should read 'the Lawful Forms of Conscription and the Corvée as authorized by Royal Decree, originating from her Majesty, the Constitutional Convention, or such Institutions of Legislation as they may establish,' as we may well find ourselves with an Assembly or Senate by the time we are done here and it would be a shame to have to amend the law for them to collect taxes in work as well as in coin." 

“Thank you, Archduke, an excellent modification. This law passed Judiciary unanimously and I hope that no discussion of the plight of our fellow delegates will distract too much from the case for it.”

He will give Count Bellumar a very polite nod and then get back to his seat.

“If we’re talking about the actual law again… It shouldn’t apply to orcs just because they aren’t slaves yet, that’s not fair to the baron. Makes it impossible for him to keep order. Sometimes it’s more than a week until the paladin shows up, you see?”

“If I capture a bandit I will charge them with banditry even if we subsequently have to wait for a paladin to try them on the charge; your lord can do the same. Perhaps no orcs should be free subjects of Her Majesty but that would be a matter for a different law.”

Lluïsa is a bit uncomfortable with Sirmium's implication that these laws will stand past the actual constitution without being otherwise ratified or adopted!

(It's a good law and she likes it, but come on, really?)

Probably the convention that just made all Chelish halflings free subjects is not going to turn around and declare that orcs can't be. He is nevertheless idly trying to work out what would even happen if it did. 

She's going to go and stand up and say something even though she hates this but she hates what the Count is saying more and this is important. Nothing terrible happened when she asked her question earlier and she got the proposal changed the way that she wanted, but it was a small point and this is a bigger one and there's more places that she might be misunderstanding something. 

"I wanted to second the Archduke on this proposed law. I do think we should go farther, and agree that we should go at least this far.

For additional protections, I wanted to repeat the earlier concern about whether charges would be public - without them being public, it is hard for others to know if this law is being followed. I am also concerned that nothing in this bill prevents law enforcement from saying that they're investigating people for made up crimes even if they don't have any real reason to believe that people committed those crimes. Maybe that's a different proposal about how we make sure that people who are supposed to enforce the law are following the law. But that still might not help people because this proposal doesn't say anything about whether the suspicion that someone committed a crime needs to make sense or be a good reason."

She's not sure if she's saying that right but maybe giving a concrete example like 'what if I said I suspected the Count of treason, how could anyone tell whether this was the kind of suspicion that counts here, if I was law enforcement' would be slander and she's not sure that that would make anything clearer. She's getting turned around thinking about it herself.

"And - I know the Archduke asked us to pause our debate about Good and Law, but - I wanted to remind everyone here that it is possible to be Good without being Lawful, and we all know it is possible to be Lawful without being Good. Asmodeus was. And it is better to be Good than Lawful." 

Urgh that all sounds so trite and shallow and she's so bad at explaining what good is to people when they don't already know themselves. She also wants to say that they shouldn't follow bad laws and instead they should just do good things but this seems unlikely to help and maybe if she says that they'll make it illegal to say that and it would be better if they didn't do that. Probably it's not already illegal somehow. 

Clap clap clap!

"At this time, I think, we will vote on the proposal. The Judiciary committee appreciates your time and your consideration, and will take your further proposals with us for consideration this afternoon."

Well, he's obnoxious but it's a good law and probably the only trap was the fact it'll very very briefly ban the sortitions. In favor.

Xavier is in favor of all the parts that the archmage will permit to take effect.

This sounds like it annoys people he dislikes, so he'll vote in favor.

Seven days is a reasonable limit and she doesn’t think there are any other traps, in favor.