The Metaverse Republic

I. Overview

The Metaverse Republic is a non-profitmaking organisation aiming to respond to the increasing need for self-regulation in the virtual world of SecondLife, and eventually in other similar, platforms. It seeks to achieve this by providing a functioning, professional, high-quality justice system with real powers of enforcement based loosely on the English common law system, backed by a democratically-elected Parliament, and implemented and enforced by an executive responsible solely for its general management and upkeep.

The Metaverse Republic is structured around the key principles of separation of powers, the rule of law, and democratic legitimacy, and has as ultimate source of law a written constitution. It thus constitutes an upper tier of governance in a quasi-confederal model which respects local communities’ autonomy and right to develop their own systems of government, including rules of citizenship, justice and enforcement.

II. The Confederal Level

The Confederal Level of the Metaverse Republic will include all institutions and individuals comprising the judiciary, legislative, and executive branches of governance, as set out in the Constitution.

1. The Judiciary

The core of the Metaverse Republic is a system of courts staffed by qualified professional judges possessing security of tenure, capable of resolving any disputed matters between users of the platform(s) in which it operates according to a formal procedure, the ultimate penalty at its disposal being that of banishment. As in all common law systems, in the absence of any constitutional or legislative rule governing any particular issue, the court will devise its own rule, and its decision will constitute a precedent binding on courts at the same or lower levels in future cases.

The judiciary will comprise a Chief Judge, who will decide which judge will hear which case, two Deputy Chief Judges, who, together with the Chief Judge, will make judicial appointments, make rules of judicial procedure, and a code of ethics for judges, as well as a number of permanent, full-time Judges and part-time Deputy Judges. It will have two levels of court: the General Court, which will hear most general first-instance litigation and be presided over by judge and, in appropriate cases, a jury; and a High Court which will hear appeals from the General Court and, where required by the Constitution or the importance of the case, some first instance cases. It will be presided by at least three full-time Judges and, in appropriate cases, a jury.

The courts will be administratively and financially independent, funded by charging the losing litigant in each case costs based on a public, fixed, graded scale, and managed by an independent body named the Judiciary Commission.

2. The Parliament

The unicameral Parliament, comprising members elected democratically by popular vote, will be the legislature for the Metaverse Republic. Its role will be to pass legislation in conformity with requirements of the Constitution – the latter capable of being amended only by a vote of at least 11 out of the 14 members of a Great Council constituted by members of all of the institutions of state and convened solely for that purpose. To ensure such conformity, all laws passed by parliament will come into force only after being ratified by an independent Constitutional Committee, whose members will be nominated by a vote amongst existing members and confirmed by a vote in the Public Oversight Panel.

The Public Oversight Panel will be democratically elected and charged with general oversight of the Metaverse Republic’s administration, including the power to call before it in public hearings any public official, to conduct investigations, write reports, and make recommendations. Like most other official bodies of the Metaverse Republic, it will have standing to bring impeachment proceedings against any other public officer before the High Court.

Parliament – with the assistance of a Drafting Committee comprised in part by legal experts, may legislate by simple majority vote on any topic that it pleases. Its legislation, once ratified as in conformity with the requirements of the Constitution, will be binding on the courts at all levels, and displace any previous common law precedents on the same subject, in so far as they conflict.

3. The Executive

The Executive will control the Metaverse Republic’s finances and land, will collect fines, and manage public relations. It will also be responsible for the upkeep and development of the banishment database system, the corresponding consultation interface and the in-world enforcement object capable of ejecting and banning anyone listed on the banishment database from the land on which it is based.

The Executive Committee will comprise an elected President and Deputy President, as well as various appointed specialised officers. Important executive decisions, such as the confirmation of appointed executive members, will require a majority vote in the Executive Committee, although the President will have the power to veto any such resolution, which power will be delegable to the Deputy President in the President’s absence.

The appointed members of the Executive will direct the Metaverse Republic’s functionaries and will be collectively responsible for administering all popular elections, as well as checking eligibility to vote.

III. The Local Level

Any user of SecondLife will be able to subscribe to the Metaverse Republic by placing a freely obtainable object on her or his land, which will link to the banishment database and eject anybody whose name appears on it (except the owner of the land on which it is placed). Entire local communities will be able to subscribe en bloc by subscribing all of their land to the Metaverse Republic and obtaining a local charter; citizens of those local communities would be counted as subscribers even if they did not have any land themselves. Local charters would be approved by Parliament, the Executive and the Constitutional Committee. Such local communities may be either territorially-based (entire sims) or non-territorial (communities of purpose whose members may own non-contiguous lots of land). Anybody who has been a subscriber for a fixed minimum amount of time, (whether directly or by local citizenship), will be entitled to vote in regular elections to the Parliament, the Public Oversight Panel, and for the President and Deputy President.

In order to enable local communities to have access to formal, fair and sophisticated justice system with strong methods of enforcement for their own local rules, the Metaverse Republic will, in some cases, enforce locally rules specific to certain local communities. Reciprocally, local communities with their own means of enforcement might be required in their local charters to use them to enforce orders of the courts of the Metaverse Republic.

Some local communities might have their own local courts. Where these are provided for in a local community’s charter, the confederal courts of the Metaverse Republic would have the power to enforce the orders of the local courts, and vice versa. Where there are local courts, they would be the institutions that would primarily enforce local rules, although with a right of appeal to the High Court. The Constitution will set out the relationship between the jurisdiction of the confederal and local courts.

Parliament would be able to revoke a local charter by a majority vote. The Constitutioanl Committee would also be able to do so, but only on the ground that the locality had changed such that it is no longer in conformity with the Metaverse Republic’s constitution. The High Court would have the power to suspend a local charter if a locality has acted unlawfully, but would only do so as a last resort.