This page contains a list of some important laws/executive orders/court rulings. Dates provided in MONTH/DAY/YEAR form.
[01/01/2210] Executive Order 53374: Secretary-General Kurt Bannister announced that those in Repliforce were to be granted citizenship in the United Nations. This Order was supported by the Congress in the narrowly-passed Citizenship Act of 2210, passed on 03/29/2210.
[5/18/2210] De Contemplendo Citizenship Act: Some cried foul, stating that this grant of citizenship could not be given by either an Executive Order or a law, but required an ammendment to the charter, and therefore challenged it. The Supreme Court upheld the law, with a vote of 14-5. The Chief Justice, Emma Latic, concurred with 10 of the 14 supporting Justices in the following opinion: a) The Executive Order was allowable, but in general such Orders are of limited duration; meant to compel an immediate action, not institute a practice. A reasonable definition of the maximum duration is the amount of time the Executive is in office. b) The law was legitimately made, because it did not change any provision of the Charter. Rather, those in Repliforce effectively constituted a group of immigrants.
[10/22/2210] Ex Parte Minerva: A Repliforce member (Private Minerva) with a less-than-pristine service record was charged with contamination by the Maverick Virus, after she made several incendiary remarks. She was sentenced by military tribunal to be placed in stasis until a cure to the Virus could be found. She appealed her sentence, and a relatively young but increasingly prominent lawyer named Kelly McLaren argued her side (free of charge) all the way to the Supreme Court of the United Nations. It was there decided on a 10-9 vote that Minerva's sentence was illegal. More importantly for history's sake, it was stated that any variation of standard procedure made on the grounds that robots need to be treated differently ought to be to satisfy a special need of the robot, not to inflict undue harm on it out of a feeling of hostility towards their 'species'. A common argument used by anti-robot groups was "You don't use the same handcuffs for a robot as a human." This was denounced as an implied over-extension of a doctrine (sensible within a certain scope) to the point where it became abusive. While obviously a somewhat vague ruling, it was made clear that robots were not to be discriminated against, and that claims of "being Maverick" were not to be made against every robot who harmed a human, or spoke against them or their government.
[10/20/11] Corporate Act: Kelly McLaren lent her support to this act, which essentially created official relationships between the UN and several military-industrial "megacorporations". These included Khan Industries, Aegis Defensive Technologies (ADT), the Earth Institute of Technology (EIT), and Syril Corporation (SyrilCorp). By 2212, 60% of the military industry of the United Nations came from megacorporations. By 2215, this number had risen to 80%. The theory was that the "megacorps" already had the techniques, market connections, and facilities established; and that it would be wasteful to try to duplicate their progress. In summary, the megacorps are subsidized with United Nations funds, and guarded by Repliforce and other United Nations military personnel. This is not simply done because they're 'useful'; megacorps receive most of their money for filling production orders, be they for Reploids or guns or explosives or spacecraft or chairs. They also lose freedoms; they basically become partially government agencies. For instance, while they have access to pieces of UN technology that are given to them, a number of restrictions are written into the Act to prevent them from doing things such as giving that tech away to other groups. Megacorps remain powerful, yes, very much so; but they are subordinate to the UN as a whole.
[01/02/12] De Contemplendo Voting Rights Act: A large percentage of the Parliament was persuaded that, in light of the Corporate Act, Reploids would be programmed or conditioned to vote for certain candidates, or not at all. They therefore pressed to curtail Reploid voting rights, calling for a screening to check for any evident programming. This was challenged, and the Court in a 15-4 decision struck down the Act as in direct violation of the doctrine of Ex Parte Minerva. The dissenting Justices argued that it was perfectly in accordance to that ruling, because this was simply checking for a 'condition' that Reploids were prone to 'develop'. The majority responded that the Act would almost certianly be abused, in fact to skew voting results by eliminating large%ages of the Reploid voting population.
[02/13/12] Reploid Production Act: In response to (partially confirmed) fears of Reploid manufacturers using methods like conditioning and preprogramming, pro-Reploid segments of the Parliament passed this act. It expressly forbade such measures, whether they were intended to increase performance or influence voting patterns.
Back to United Nations Main Page
Back to the Index