Proposed Ultimate Advice of the Council
UAC 7:16 § 34.A - Resolution of Contrary Precedents in Entailment, Guardianship, and Suffrage
The Seventh of Dentis 2716
UAC 7:16 § 34.A - Resolution of Contrary Precedents in Entailment, Guardianship, and Suffrage
The Seventh of Dentis 2716
Summary
The current body of case law concerning resolution of disputes in entailment of estates and guardianship of minors and female persons, as well as suffrage matters arising therefrom are, as of this report, internally contradictory. This state of contradiction gives rise to the uneven application of appropriate law. Per the review of supplementary case material (named in the margin) the irregularities are of such measure as to render the courts decisions upon these matters as arbitrary and subject to the character of the magistrates assigned to same. Opportunities for corruption are therefore ripe, as indeed several cases (also named in the margin) of the impeachment of magistrates for abuse of office and corrupt dealing has shown.
Further, the courts have shown a persistent and ingrained reticence to provide legal advice and to state with clarity what the law is. In view of this state of affairs, it is proposed that a clarifying amendment and an Ultimate Advice of the Council is to be issued, thus setting the law upon firmer ground.
The current state of the law has, on numerous occasions, led to the Courts of Equity being entirely unable to resolve the more complex suits in a timely fashion conducive to justice. Unscrupulous attorneys have taken advantage of the state of the case law to prolong suits before the Courts to such a degree that estates in dispute have been entirely consumed by legal costs, and the subjects of guardianship have passed away from extreme age before any resolution of the underlying matters can be reached.
Boythorn and Boythorn ( 5:12:6-CCA-45216 B:B/CCL) provides a particularly well known example of both of these phenomena, having been before the Courts of Equity continually from 2512 through 2629. The matter remains unresolved as to the law, being dropped when the whole of the estate was exhausted by the dispute and thus rendered moot the challenges to the termination of the guardianship of Hester Boythorn (d 2596).
While extreme cases such as Boythorn remain in the minority, they arise out of the same unclear body of law and therefore cannot be discounted as illustrative of the underlying issue.
A concomitant issue arising from this same unclarity is the suits of great complexity monopolize the Courts’ time and thus have an adverse effect upon the clear and proper adjudication of other matters of Equity. It is well documented that this same overburdening has led to incorrect or contestable decisions in a variety of other matters (named in the margin) which serve only to increase the unclarity of case law within the whole of the body of Equity jurisprudence.
The Office of Legislative Affairs - Department of Policy Analysis (Hereafter the Department), was tasked by the Consular Committee on the Judiciary (Hereafter the Committee) to provide legislative recommendations for the amelioration of the above issues. Review of relevant cases, as well as assessment of previous legislative remedies in analogous matters, has provided some clarity as to the direction of legal opinion over the last three-hundred years. It is therefore the recommendation of the Department that the current vector of opinion be followed and remedies in keeping with same be adopted.
Principal Conclusions and Recommendations
Beginning with Spencer and Rutheford (2:4:22-CCA-108A S:R/CCL) and continuing through a line of decisions terminating in Caswell and Pynchon (6:10:7-4457L C:P/CCL) the vector of opinion can be determined to be toward simplification of the law and the reduction of the powers of guardianship with reference to male persons.
This vector of opinion, viewed in the light of the Suffrage Reform Act of 2564, leads to the inevitable conclusion that the laws of Entailment and Guardianship for minors and female persons would likewise undergo this same process albeit at a considerably attenuated rate. Current projections (detailed in Section IV) are that near-harmonization of Equity and Guardianship laws will be reached by 2753 without any intervening act from the Council.
Intervening costs to the Courts of Equity as well as the spreading effects of poorly adjudicated case law (detailed in Section V) are somewhat more difficult to project but it can be conservatively estimated at 72 million concords over the course of the intervening 37 years. This being solely the direct cost to their Majesties’ Government. An additional 500 million concords of private wealth can be estimated to be tried up within the Equity system during this same period.
Effects upon tax policy (detailed in Section VI) over the same period would indicate an overall drop in allocations to the public purse in correlation with the amount of wealth and property sequestered within the Equity system. It is therefore the recommendation of the Department that the Committee take the position that the regularization of Entailment and Guardianship statutes be enacted within the next five years, and no later than 2722 from a cost perspective alone.
Further projections regarding the social costs of maintaining the current legal framework (detailed in Section VII) are likewise significant. Corruption of magistrates, and subsequent scandal lead to the undermining of public faith in the impartial administration of the law. Domestic agitation and protest is likewise considered to be, if not inevitable, then highly probable. It is therefore the advantage of their Majesties’ Government to harmonize the entailment, guardianship, and suffrage laws to remove the consideration of gender from all matters pertaining thereto.
