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Old 01-16-2019, 03:18 PM   #5
Phantasm
 
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: On the road again...
Default Re: What would be the skills to obtain sovereignty?

I'm going to attempt to keep this theoretical. No political parties have been named.

Using the US system as an example:

First off, you'd need an army of lobbyists making a series of Diplomacy rolls on at least a monthly basis, probably with TDMs from bribery, against the better of each federal legislator's Politics, Law (United States Corporate Law), or Market Analysis skills; the legislator would use the other two as complementary on the main skill he'd resist against. He'd also have TDMs based on the party line and whether it supports or goes against the platform he ran on.

The initial bill to change the law to support extraterritoriality inside US borders would then take shape with paralegals and other office writers hammering out the details with a series of Law (United States Corporate Law) and Writing rolls.

And then each legislator involved in the initial proposal would need to succeed at Public Speaking each time s/he delivered a speech about this. This is needed to get the House or the Senate to send the bill to committee for further consideration.

And this is where most bills die. Most never make it out of committee.

In the committee, the bill is debated using all sorts of Influence skills, complemented by Law (United States Constitution or United States Tax Laws), Market Analysis (for the projected impact of such a move on the economy), and similar skills. Legal clerks rewrite the bill using Writing (Legalese).

Assuming in the unlikely (but for the sake of argument not impossible) event that such a bill comes out of committee, the bill is then sent to the floor of the house that originated it. Public Speaking rolls are made, Politics and Influence rolls are made behind closed doors (resisted by Will and modified by personal viewpoint, party line on the issue, and its impact on the next election).

Then it's voted on. Should it pass, it's sent to the other House of Congress, where the process starting from voting to send it to committee is repeated.

Should both Houses of Congress agree to the same bill, it's send to the President for a signature or veto. Here, you're looking at the lobbyists' and the supporters' Influence skills vs the detractors' Influence skills and the President's own Will, likewise modified by his position on the issue.

Should the President sign it - or fail to act on it in ten days (what is called an unsigned law) - the bill becomes law. However, the President also has the option to veto the bill, at which point it gets sent back to Congress where more political behind-closed-doors and open debate on the floor occur. IIRC, it takes 2/3 of each House in Congress to override a Presidential veto.

Even if it becomes law, that is not the end of the issue! The megacorporation is not free and clear. Inevitably in cases like this a suit challenging the law will appear in federal courts, which means it'll be argued by Public Speaking complemented by Law (US Constitutional) in front of first a Federal District Court judge, then a Circuit Court of Appeals panel of judges, and (let's go all-out here!) the Supreme Court of the United States. The Public Speaking and Law rolls - again, a series, not a quick contest - are opposed by the judges' own Law (US Constitutional) rolls, often with Research rolls to find precedents.

And the SCOTUS has the option to declare the law unconstitutional, rendering all past effort null and void. The SCOTUS needs a simple majority on any ruling; at present that's a minimum 5-4 ruling, which means that the megacorp's lawyers will need to Influence at least five justices out of nine. Should there be seats empty (due to death or resignation), a 4-4 ruling means the SCOTUS didn't come to a consensus and the lower court's ruling is held intact.


Clear as mud?



As an aside, I have no idea about how Canada or Mexico would handle this in their systems. Anyone knowledgeable about Parliamentary systems want to inform us on this?
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Last edited by Phantasm; 01-16-2019 at 03:29 PM.
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