Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (Themiclesia)

The Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (告獻, skus-kngar) is a statutory committee of the House of Lords of Themiclesia and functions as the court of last resort.

History

The modern Appellate Committee is a continuation of the judicial functions of the Council of Waiting Peers (侍中侯省).  Anciently, affairs of state were delegated to the Chancellor (相邦), and judicial functions specifically (at least partially and to varying extents) to the Justice of the Royal Court (廷㷉).  The Justice heard cases referred to him by the sovereign or other justices sent to the provinces and also reviewed certain cases, mainly those involving capital punishment, as a matter of course. But it was possible, if infrequent, for the Justice to refer cases to the sovereign in open court for final adjudication. No firm rule seems to have governed this process except the identity of the parties—members of the royal family and the nobility had a recognized privilege to appeal to the crown if facing conviction.

Over multiple centuries and evolving arrangements of power, appeals to the crown were regularized. Since the sovereign was rarely able to resolve a legal difficulty that has outfoxed experienced judges, the case was invariably opened before a full court, which deliberated and then advised the sovereign to render final judgement; such a procedure is likely to have alleviated from the ruler personal responsibility for any poor judgement and also prevent the seeking of private or further redress, as a judgement passed by the entire aristocracy. By the time of the Themiclesian Republic, this function was evidently so ingrained that, even in the absence of a monarch, it was still carried out by an assembly of nobles.   However, this procedure had its drawbacks, as a full assembly of the crown's peers was not a regular occurrence in the 16th and 17th centuries, and such an appeal could be a tactic for undue delay or to fatigue another litigant into abandoning the suit.

After a ruler was restored to the throne, it became the rule that appeals from the Justice of the Court were heard by the Emperor's council of barons in waiting, who were a group of nobles who attended to the emperor personally in the imperial palace (as opposed to discharging functions in the provinces or spending time at home). Judgements were made by this council after at least a ceremonial conference with the crown, which was a regular occurrence by all accounts. This court had the advantage of a relatively disinterested group of judges, since the barons in waiting were less likely to be involved in contentious matters outside of the court, but it also was constrained by a lack of judicial experience. After complaints by not less than judges themselves, it became customary to appoint at least one judge as a baron in waiting to provide experience.

Thus, by the middle of the 16th century, Themiclesia effectively had a three-tier court structure: a civil or criminal case began in a provincial court, and appeals against whose judgement took place before the Justice of the Royal Court, and a further appeal was possible before emperor's barons-in-waiting.

Cases

Marital rape case (1922)

Historically, Themiclesian law had been largely silent on the subject of sexual relations between lawfully-wed spouses. According to the majority position as understood in the 1922 case, no law specifically excludes a husband from the criminality arising from forcing his wife to have sex with him, and the old statute for the punishment of rape (now already superseded but considered instructive through precedents under it) makes no difference of marital state. So it is theoretically possible for a husband to be guilty of raping his lawfully-wed wife.

Five Coins Case (1949)

After diplomatic relations with Dayashina were restored in the wake of the Pan-Septentrion War, the first embassy was led by the Baron of Sar in 1947. In the following year, the military attaché Lieutenant-Colonel Ket was accused of raping a Kishita Aokumo, a Dayashinese girl whom he met at a public house in Nakazara in the evening of October 7. Kishita stated that the sexual assaut occurred in the back alley of the public house, after which Ket gave five silver coins (valued at 25 shillings in Tyrannian money) to Kishita and bade her keep quiet. But according to Ket, at the night of the incident, he had indeed met Kishita, but before the alleged time of the incident, he had already returned to the premises of the mission. A complaint was filed with the Themiclesian mission, which was rejected for lack of evidence.

Kishita's parents wired the same complaint to the East Expeditionary Army, then headquartered in Sunju, Menghe, as Ket was seconded from this force. After soliciting evidence, in particular the entry and exit log maintained by the embassy that indicated Ket entered the embassy prior to the time of the allegation, a grand jury in the EEA decided there were insufficient grounds to indict. While Kishita's father said that it was conceivable the log could have been doctored, the EEA's grand jury still did not indict. Later scholars, studying the transcripts of the grand jury hearing, suggested some jurors may have mentally characterized Kishita as a prostitute even though affidavits did not describe her that way; in particular, an unnamed juror said that "25 shillings is better than good money".

Unfazed by this denial, Kishita's father Saemon travelled to Themiclesia in early 1949 and petitioned the House of Lords to punish Ket for his misbehaviour after the Supreme Court of Themiclesia turned him away for lack of jurisdiction. The Clerk of the Parliaments initially found the question difficult to deal with, since normally the House of Lords only heard cases on appeal or impeachment trials, and the matter with Ket did not even reach trial before. However, having secured representation by Ree Ree Ree and Partners, the petition was edited to read that misconduct by a Themiclesian official was rejected for lack of jurisdiction, and the House of Lords must render justice to Kishita or it would be tantamount to admitting the actions of Themiclesian soldiers abroad were "outside of the law".