"Please."

"Specifically in the context of marriages — ordering a woman to mistreat her children by another man, which wouldn't be covered by a strict reading of that proposal except in cases where the man orders her to kill them. Forbidding a woman from food, water, or healing as punishment for actual or perceived misconduct. Ordering a women to break sworn oaths, out of the belief that both of them are damned anyway and it's better to be damned to the Abyss than to Hell. All of those are happening anyway, to some degree, but I would rather not make it outright illegal to refuse." Wives swearing to obeying their husbands is a good idea in general but a worse idea when many husbands lack anything resembling a functioning conscience.

"I haven't specifically seen any cases of husbands ordering their wives to assist them with fights that don't rise to the level of assault with a deadly weapon, but I'd also prefer to avoid that in most circumstances. ...To be clear, I'm not thinking of situations where the fight was necessary to defend their home or family, I'm mainly thinking of interpersonal disputes that probably should have been settled non-violently in the first place."

"All of those seem like things that would belong in a functional theory of when women should not obey their husbands, yes. ....it is not illegal for a woman to not obey her husband anywhere I'm familiar with, to be clear, it's just a way in which she is failing to fulfill her obligations in the marriage, and sometimes grounds for divorce."

"There are interpretations of Taldan law under which it could sometimes be regarded as illegal, though I generally wouldn't expect someone to be prosecuted for it, nor to regard it as a meaningful constraint on her behavior as distinct from her marriage vows."

"There was already some discussion of what sorts of provisions in marriage contracts should be considered invalid and not enforced by law, but we did not get very far. Many existing contracts are... bad."

 "I do not think the state should be in the habit of enforcing conduct in marriage except in permitting some and not other grounds for divorce. But I think insubordination is properly grounds for divorce, because it is - a serious injury to a husband to put him in a position where he cannot uphold his own obligations."

"That seems like it would allow any husband to trivially abandon his wife at will, as long as he begins by spending some time giving her the worst allowed orders he can think of until she breaks down."

"I think, Delegate, with all due respect, that Asmodeans tend to assume all courts and authorities are operating with the intent to cause as much social harm and permit as many damaging abuses as they possibly can, and no plans work if you make that assumption. If you go to a remotely reasonable magistrate with a divorce case like that he'd...well, he'd probably grant the divorce because the woman ought to be free of the man, but he'd surely still oblige the man in support of his former family."

She should stop. She should not say that they don't even have enough reasonable magistrates to try murder cases, and are accordingly offloading almost all of them to paladins. She should not say that under those conditions, the only wise thing to do is not to marry, and that accordingly the proposed law is making it a crime - or a tort, fine - to ever have a child with a woman who has even the smallest trace of sense.

Not gonna say it. She does still have a disabled ghost of a self-preservation instinct. 

"No, I think she's right to distrust the magistrates we have, and will have for a while. That's half of why we need a second convention as Count Ardiaca requested, to revise our laws once we have a system which can carry them out faithfully and honorably. -That reminds me, Count, Rights passed it, whenever you want it on the floor just send me a message and meet me at the podium."

"Thank you, Archduchess. I expect everyone at the convention will be pleased by that." Well, some grasping fools won't be, but everyone who wants to pretend to be reasonable will.

Eulàlia will also smile at the Archduchess, who swept in to her defense today.

Carlota opens her mouth to say she's all in favor of the proposal to have another convention in forty years and then remembers that perhaps she isn't, because Alexeara's writing this one. 

Well, that depends on what the floor will accept, doesn't it?

Why, they can get a great deal through the floor if they set their minds to it. Carlota is undecided on whether she wants to try again in forty years. She will be a wealthy widow with ten grown children....actually that'd probably be a lot of fun...


"I think Rights should generally consider bringing some of your proposals to the floor piecemeal instead of waiting to have them all. Less complicated votes are easier to win, and some of them are useful to have as protection against other laws people are bringing forwards."

"I've been aiming to bring packages of a few related things - several rights about how we can treat those under suspicion of a crime, family matters before we split that out, there are some matters of property to consider - but debate's been taking quite some time so I haven't gotten any of those ready to go."

"What proposals are ready at the moment? For that matter, are there any proposed rights around criminal investigations that Judiciary should be aware of?"

"Tomorrow I'll be introducing a rule against punishments not used in Lastwall or approved by Iomedae's church. I think everything we're considering around investigations is about treatment of prisoners under suspicion, and a lot of it I'm unsure whether it's wise. Banning getting a prisoner drunk for questioning, for example, which I'm sure Cayden hates but if we ban everything like it, that's very much untested and we might not like the consequences."

Carlota is not sure what they get by making Cayden happy but she's not going to say that to the Caydenite.

"It looks like tomorrow we are going to have several fights about torture. Urban Order passed a measure restoring the old Arodenite punishments and Rights a dueling one proposing Lastwall's." 

Carlota does not actually object to torturous punishment, at all. But she is the Church's now and they do. "I don't actually think that fight is winnable in general but it might be winnable via the Reclamation all saying 'look, we're half the justice system and we can't sentence people to being slowly disemboweled'."

Oh gods do they have to keep being half the justice system to prevent people from being slowly disemboweled.

"That might decide it. Though I don't believe the proposal actually requires it to be used."

What's wrong with slowly disemboweling people. 

She has enough sense to not ask that. 

"See, I think that makes it a much harder argument, because 'we shouldn't usually torture people to death' is a much easier argument than 'the magistrate should not under any circumstances have discretion about it'. If no lord of Cheliax has a very lurid story about a man who figured he had nothing left to lose and went on to do several more disturbing atrocities he could probably have been deterred from if he did have anything to lose then I'll be astounded. I have a few, frankly, though I don't mean to get up there and tell them."

"Is the proposal to torture people to death for repeated capital crimes? In the hopes they'll stop at one?"

"I think that is a common case where it's popular but not the only one. ...maybe the Church can win 'not at the magistrate's discretion' where it couldn't win 'under specific and limited circumstances' because of the tendency of the body to assume that whatever the rules are they will be applied in the most evil possible way. ....Tallandria, I don't know if this is an issue you feel strongly about in any direction but you are the acknowledged expert at making that argument to the sortitions."