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.