He's here, and noticing the mood is frostier than it was yesterday.

There is an armored observer, who is also observing the frostiness. Perhaps this was a bad time, but he's already here.

Jonatan is here, and not acting frostily at all.

Lluïsa has ray of frost prepared. Not for use in committee meetings.

"Well," says Marta, with at least apparent warmth, "I think many of us have learned a valuable lesson about the possible downfalls of passing legislation too hastily, and happily learned them without any ill effects."

Narikopolus is here. If he has feelings, they are not at this time apparent.

Marit is trying to figure out how to politely explain to Count Bellumar that if you sometimes put deceptive tricks into your proposals, it forces everyone else to spend far more time and effort verifying that your proposals do not have tricks, even when they genuinely don't have any tricks and serve your shared goals. He and Count Bellumar are both Taldan nobility originally. It really seems like it ought to be possible to explain this without offending him.

Imran is demonstrating the Paladin Eyebrow of Doom for Bellumar. It is not a friendly eyebrow. Apparently stereotypes regarding Taldane nobles apply, at least to those Taldane nobles who don't give up all their possessions to go on crusade.

Elias has some hope that they can get actual law and order decrees passed at some point.

"Calling this meeting of the Judiciary Committee to order. Congratulations to you all, first off, our first law passed, and I think by one of the strongest margins of the convention since it introduced the secret ballot! It looks like we have a guest, did you have a petition for this committee?"

"I'd like to sit in as an observer, if I may. But also, given some confusions clearly held among this and other committees, I thought I might explain, to the best of my knowledge, the general landscape of how Chelish subjects typically perceive the severities of various punishments. My order's scope across the cities and towns of the country gave us a relatively clear picture. If the committee finds that worthwhile?"

Hellknights just love punishments, don't they.

"I have no objections to an observer though I'll let any member ask you to leave just as they can ask for the scribes to leave. Is this a short presentation you have prepared now or one you would prepare in the future if there is interest?"

"Relatively brief, and I can give it now. I will of course leave if asked."

"Go ahead."

"Thank you. As you all may be aware, the Order of the Chain puts a high priority on taking criminals prisoner and making them serve society, rather than executing them, and I have personally witnessed a variety of punishments inflicted by other authorities. I therefore have some suggestions about different tiers of severity of punishment, particularly with respect to how they are perceived."

"The mildest punishment is lashes with a horsewhip, and starting with ten lashes is a suitable punishment for older children. For an adult, such a light punishment will be interpreted as a de facto pardon, the magistrate deciding that no crime was committed or being bribed for clemency. Thirty strokes with a horsewhip, or ten with a leather cat, are a reasonable place to start for an adult. More severe than that is a spiked whip or cat, and ten strokes with a spiked cat is a standard punishment."

"An alternative which was readily useful in the past is maiming. Removal of the last two fingers of the dominant hand for pickpocketing, and removal of the other hand on a second offense, was previously a significant punishment, and not the only form. Presently this is less viable because the Archhealer sells regeneration which can repair it, and so it is merely a sentence of significant pain and a significant fine, unless Naima Cotonnet can be convinced not to repair such damage."

"Hard labor is generally more serious yet than maiming. Obviously sentences to the spellsilver or gold mines are a de facto death sentence, and second only to immediate execution in severity as a punishment. But other forms of labor are usable; for those minor criminals caught by the Order and put to work in Citadel Gheradesca, we have them work in open-pit iron mines and stone quarries, which is back-breaking labor that instills humility and pays a debt to society, but not fatal like a ten-year sentence to the depths."

"There are of course also fines, possibility of conscription, and other sentences which can take effect as punishment for crimes, but the punishments I outlined are approximately in order of how seriously the Chelish people will take them. Execution of various degrees of torment is of course also a factor in how severe the people will judge various crimes, but I am neither an expert in the distinctions there, nor well informed as to which of those methods are acceptable in a country not sworn to Hell."

"Separately, for significant spellcasters of high circle, there is a different form of sentence to labor. This is classically the Order of the Chain's remit, and Citadel Gheradesca continues to stand ready to hold prisoners in such a way as to make use of their spellcasting for the good of the state, by compelling them to provide spellcasting services or the creation of magical items. Such imprisonment is expensive and I believe considered better than execution by most of its inmates, though ones who are less likely to be damned may have a different opinion. It is the most secure prison in Avistan as well as the largest on the mainland, and it is our duty and our honor to provide it as a service to the Crown and her representatives, in line with the agreements we made with Her Majesty just before and just after the Four-Day War."

"I am at your disposal for any questions."

"Would you be willing to repeat this to the Urban Order committee, when we meet later today?"

"Of course. Unless it conflicts with Safe Roads, which is my only current committee, but I don't believe it does."

"Thank you for your expert testimony," he says simply. "Perhaps some members of the committee would wish to share what punishments have been in use for the last year, so we may compare?"

"Assizes are a terrible setup for sentencing, especially trying to keep executions down to a bare minimum so that the villages don't collapse and everyone remaining there starve. We don't have the ability to supervise that would make a labor or indenture sentence conscionable, and can't do exile either, and can't follow up on any fine that isn't within the sentenced's ability to pay immediately. I can go over what we've been doing under these constraints but the constraints are so overwhelming that I don't think the results will be informative to any other situation."

"All right, one thing that can very obviously be done is - I understand why local lords were not given authority over sentencing, because some of them are still Asmodeans, but they ought to be empowered to enforce the sentences Heaven hands down, and then you can do - a season of labor, or a fine paid at harvest time, things like that."

"The reason we'd need supervisory power to hand down labor sentences is precisely because some of them are still Asmodeans. We can't hand someone off to a warden who may abuse the power and there's no time to give everybody in town an illegal orders class."

"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."

"If a bailiff served in their role for ten years, by replacing them all we are asking the crown to make ten years of appointments at once, with all the usual sources for recruitment shuttered. The law schools are not creating judges; the noble families that once infested Egorian and supplied many of the minor bureaucrats have been cast down. Remember that the crown must find magistrates as well, and those are a much higher priority, and even after a year we are not at a tenth of the number that the Thrunes employed. I do not see a way out of this besides making use of local recruitment and local judgment."

"I would rely on imports, rather than local recruitment. But I certainly think we can't wait on the Crown."

He nods to Ser Elkader. "If we must rely on local appointments, it might be a good idea to initially grant the power to make appointments only to nobles of count rank or higher, all of whom have at least been vetted, and to those of their vassals whom they specifically empower to make said appointments." 

Besides, higher rank tends to be associated with greater virtue, though perhaps that's less applicable when half the counts in Longmarch are foreign commoners by birth and almost none of the archdukes were brought up to handle the responsibility of such a position.

"Hmm, I suppose there will be less arguments over who gets to make the appointment if it's done by the counts since a bailiwick is more likely to fall inside a single county than a single barony. Add in the increased vetting of counts, and you've convinced me they should make the appointments.

That leaves the appeals courts, the urban courts, and the permanent assizes. I'm afraid I have little direct expertise with any of them, but I am happy to share what I have gathered so far, or for the chair to close out this section with a vote and bring us to a different part of the agenda."

"I think we should give Delegate Oriol some days to draft the actual law before we vote on it, but I suppose we can hold a vote on the broad concept of provisional bailiffs, appointed by counts and up, so the paladins can vet if they are making accurate and merciful decisions and they can replace the Reclamation once they are. Since there's no point in drafting the law if we don't agree it's a good law we'll recommend to the floor. So - nonbinding vote on whether you think you'd support this if it's well-drafted?"

"Aye."

"Aye."

"Aye."

"Aye, with regards to the broad details."

"Aye."

"No," he's really skeptical about this.

Nod. "Aye."

Naturally she's voting for herself drafting things.

What a stupid idea. "Aye."

He's still not convinced that there's anything fundamentally wrong with crown appointments when the crown isn't evil, but the crown isn't appointing people and he doesn't really want it to start doing so in Menador. "Aye."

"All right. Then we can perhaps convene tomorrow to consider Delegate Oriol's draft. Does anyone else have business to put before this committee today?"

"Before she drafts it, I had a minor suggestion. Based on my experiences on assize, I think the draft should explicitly permit the Queen to revoke the right of any given noble to appoint bailiffs — I realize that this would almost certainly be permitted regardless, but I suspect the wording of any of this committee's proposals will be scrutinized carefully going forward."

"That sounds perfectly sensible." In Taldor the imperial court has that power. It just means you need to pay them a fee when you inherit and probably also if you ever cause some kind of mess that reaches their notice, which is a very good system.

"A natural enough Clause," she agrees.

Ser Nerius may appreciate the value of uniform standards of Law, or perhaps he just mistrusts the lower nobility. Either way, it saves Valenti the trouble of proposing it on the floor.

"Very sensible, Marit."