"So if something came up in my county where the appropriate sentence was a season working on the roads, can I expect my paladin would inform me of this and let me handle it from there, or would he be unable to do that unless I have taken a class? You could host the classes while everyone's in one place, if they are preventing handing out just sentences right now."

"If your paladin knows you and feels you could be trusted with this responsibility then I think his remit would be flexible enough to allow him to assign you this task. So it will ease up after a given one has been through the same area enough times."

"It's not just the lords who'd need the class, though. Illegal orders classes are for people who might receive such orders more than anything, and I'd be very concerned that they wouldn't be taken to heart by the average peasant."

"Most local lords did not previously have authority over sentencing, and have no experience dispensing justice of any kind. It may be that with sufficient limits and supervision, they could be given it, but it is not a return to the status quo. The status quo, in most areas, was a separate system of judges appointed by the crown, who have been removed. I don't know that this means they can't be empowered to, but I would advise not thinking of most of them as having any particular experience here."

(Jonatan has absolutely been treating himself as having authority to hand down sentences for serious crimes in the absence of a paladin-assize, but that seems like the sort of thing that the paladins would unduly panic about even though it's not like it actually serves anyone if he has to find a way to safely hold bandits for months.)

"Given that the paladin-assizes model will most likely not be permanent, it might be worth considering whether there are any specific provisions we should make with regards to labor sentences going forward."

He too has been killing bandits on the spot. Surely no one expects them not to do that. "I think many of the lords appointed by the Queen have their experience in other jurisdictions where ensuring justice is done in their lands is the ultimate responsibility of a lord, though of course usually he hires people to do it. Maybe we can make a very simple statement of the rights of labor prisoners which is read to them during sentencing, and check with their overseers if it's adhered to." Though really it seems like the problem is that paladins are too scrupulous to be reasonable and ought to be replaced. 

"I am also wondering if perhaps we should tell local lords to hire sheriffs who can rule provisionally, and then the paladins can check their work when they come into town, and thereby both build a replacement system and test how adequate it is and in places where it's adequate take pressure off the assizes."

"Those both sound like excellent steps."

"Our last law was ably drafted by Delegate Oriol; Delegate Oriol, would you be willing to draft a law providing for provisional sheriffs? For the statement of rights to be read at sentencing I admit I have no idea what would be in it." 

"Have we any overlap with the committee on rights?"

Jonatan has been keeping close track of committee membership ever since he realized that committees were important. "We do not. I believe they have room for additional members; it might be worth checking whether they would appreciate the input of a paladin, now that we have paladins at the convention."

Nod. "I would." That's what this is all about, really. She'll except the major cities where magistrates have specifically been appointed, naturally.

Oh, apparently this is the moment.

"My understanding of how Fraga operated during the Infernal regime was a bailiff appointed by the Queen both collected royal taxes and administered justice in their bailiwick, and was widely considered a figure of terror and Asmodean tyranny. One request I heard often is that the Egorian man not return." And, implicitly, the tax holiday be made permanent and crime be handled by the villages on their own, neither of which is sustainable. "I do not know how widespread that setup is throughout the country, but I propose that when appropriate we instruct the local lords to appoint replacements who must have resided in the regions they administer for at least a year, which will hopefully make them less likely to view the peasantry as cattle to be farmed, and remove from the Queen the burden of staffing so many appointments, and for other lords to adopt this sheriff system wherever it is practical."

"I am worried that requiring anyone we appoint to have resided in the region for at least a year will make it more difficult to find suitable men." He has met very few people who grew up in modern Cheliax who are trustworthy to administer justice.

"I think whether or not bailiffs from the crown or local sheriffs are better in principle, sheriffs are much better in practice because we can hire them right away and have the paladins check their suitability right away and transition immediately, whereas it's been made clear we cannot expect that of the crown right now. So I agree wholeheartedly that sheriffs are the right route for us to go down at this juncture. I.... probably won't hire locally, not at first, because I think the locals aren't ready to do the job a way that will meet with paladin approval." Bellumar at least knows which things not to tell paladins about.

...why is Fraga old today, anyway. Wait, is that Eriape wearing his skin (poorly)? No, alas, probably not.

Elias is noticing that he appears to be in conflict with his allies here, insofar as his allies want every single barony to have a completely unique justice system and he thinks that would be bad for trade. He should figure out a way to do something about this.

"It will. I think the additional trustworthiness from local administration are worth the costs, but on reflection I had chosen that number to allow immigrants after the war, and it will not always be the right number. Perhaps we should require five years residency, but the requirement only applies to appointments made ten years from now or later."

"I am skeptical about the ability of the majority of the nobles of the realm to appoint competent sheriffs," Imran says, "considering how many of them used to serve Hell."

"Their work will be checked by paladins, and we can make it clear to the barons that the justice of their sheriffs will reflect on them." He rubs his face. "I suppose we will have to provide them a guide on what makes for a good sheriff, won't we."

"In Arodenite Cheliax, bailiffs were typically appointed by the Crown." He would of course never question Her Majesty's competence, but appointing bailiffs seems like something well within her capabilities, as long as she's not ensorcelling them to follow absurd literal interpretations of the law. "Does anyone know roughly how many local bailiffs there were prior to the Four-Day War? It seems relevant to the question of how quickly they could be replaced under either proposal."

.......well, Menador has local sheriffs and quite a lot of nobles personally hearing cases, and it works fine. For values of fine where half of his lords are currently barred from dispensing justice on the grounds that they were doing terrible things with it, and where even when they weren't they were blind to most crimes besides banditry.

It's better than the Egorian men, but there isn't much worse than a man from Egorian, so he's not sure this actually means anything.

"Sadly, I think many of the almanacs which would have given us what details the Thrunes had on the situation have been absconded with, and the national situation is difficult to discern, and they did not encourage the broad dissemination of knowledge across the country." He was astonished that his maps of the Heartlands, kept by his family in Taldor, were more accurate than most of what his vassals and their staff had to work with. "Fraga, which has six counties in it, had forty-seven bailiffs, although the boundaries of their jurisdictions do not neatly follow the lines of the duchy. I tentatively estimate half of the country resides in areas where a sheriff is appropriate, rather than falling under an urban magistrate court or being best served by a permanent assize, and the Thrunes had around one bailiff per twenty thousand residents, which suggests we need around five hundred of them for the whole country. Perhaps, with an accurate survey and census, we could redraw the boundaries in a more rational fashion, and cut the number down further, or discover that my estimate is far from the reality on the ground."

"Well, if each count hires a few, it's not so much work for any specific one."

"I don't know how long the paladin-assizes intend to continue operating, but five hundred is few enough that I expect Her Majesty could appoint them all within the next few years. Crown appointments worked perfectly well when the Crown was not in the hands of Hell, and I'm not sure it's a good idea to risk experimenting with another system under the circumstances, particularly since this body seems averse to reversing course even when one of its decisions works more poorly than expected."