Abolition of Formalities Act (1975)
The Abolition of Formalities Act of 1975 is a Themiclesian law that ended certain ceremonies required by statute or custom, centred on civilian and military administration, that the incumbent Progressive government regarded as outdated, redundant, inhibitive, vulnerable to malicious abuse, or against the principles of equality and transparency.
Chancery
The Chancery once stood at the centre of the entire administration and was the nexus between bureaucrats and the crown, and the Chancellor was considered the head of the civil service and, with the demesne aristocracy behind it, checked royal power. Up to 1975, all bureaucratic papers to the Government and Parliament were addressed to the Chancellor, who would as a matter of course pass them to the appropriate recipient. Since starting in 1845 the Prime Minister was nearly always appointed Chancellor, the Progressives believed this violated the separation of powers, even though no allegation of misconduct has actually occurred.
Technically, statutes were made in the name of the monarch and entered into force when the Chancellor promulgated them to the Principal Counsels, the bureaucrats that led the ceremnonial departments of the civil service. After royal assent was granted, the bills were passed to the Cabinet, which then commanded the Chancellor to execute the new statutes. The Cabinet has no power at this stage to withhold or delay the statute's promulgation, so the Progressives believed this step was unnecessary and thus abolished it.
Because the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal developed out of the Justiciar's department, which was subordinate to the Chancery, it was necessary to submit a petition to the Chancery to command regional courts to deliver court records to these central courts so that proceedings may re-open on them. In Tyrannian translation, this is considered the "writ of error" in Themiclesian practice. However, since the Chancellor is (by the 1970s) always the same person as the Prime Minister, the Progressives found this rule to run afoul of judicial independence. Both Conservatives and Liberals believed this reform unnecessary, since no prime minister has ever been shown to have politically interposed themselves thus, but the Progressives argued that even a technical possibility should not be entertained. By the Act, the two courts were to issue their own writs without the Chancery's involvement.
Account
The ancient ceremony of Account (上計, ntjang′-krjebh) was superintended by the Chancellor or Vice Chancellor, with assistance from the Chief Royal Commissioner, but mainly executed by the Inner Administrator, the chief fiscal officer of the central government. It revolved around the submission of certain documents (the "accounts", not limited to money accounts) to the government as the basis of future policy-making and assessment of bureaucrats' behaviour and performance. This event, which customarily took place between the eighth full-moon to the tenth new moon, was highly ceremonialized and represented the chief bureaucrat's control over the whole extent of administration. Since the middle ages, accounts have been collected in smaller intervals for enhanced control, but the annual Account remained the occasion where inquiries into irregularities occur.
Into the 19th century, the annual Account was a massive gathering of the chief accountants of hundreds of government departments and local administrations and when new accountants are introduced into public service. Accounting and law were the two earliest organized professions in Themiclesia and carried numerous privileges for professionals, even if not in public service; the basis hereof is that the crown relied upon attorneys and accountants who independently scrutinized the integrity of other officers, whether they have misapplied the law or mismanaged fiscal accounts. In the 18th century, the legal professional underwent substantial reforms in accordance with foreign legal concepts, but the accounting profession has been more conservative.
However, the Progressives contended that accounting now occurred year-round and hosting hundreds of officers for a month every year became a considerable fiscal burden.
Military administration
The Act abolished the connection between certain military bodies with parts of the civil service, some of which was meaningful but most were symbolic. The law is in a long line of similar acts that adjusted the relationship between military and civilian organizations starting from the Civil and Military Services Segregation Act (1915), the general trend amongst them being towards greater autonomy and connection for military units with important exceptions.
- The entire naval establishment was severed from the Privy Treasury, a long-defunct ceremonial department that had responsibilities over royal forests, mines, and minting of coins. Many naval officers have demanded this reform for decades, but previous governments have rejected this as "nothing more than a costly name change".
- The Consolidated Army's military police was shifted from the jurisdiction of the Attorney-general to the War Department of the Ministry of Defence. Previous to this, all military police investigations involving felonies must be reported to the Attorney-general. Civilian oversight of military law enforcement was considered fundamental to the supremacy of the civilian administration.
The alterations to these relationships is also connected to the abolition of so-called "civilian supremacy" enshrined in the Supremacy Act of 1915, stating the military officers may not enjoy higher remuneration, rank, privilege, and dignity than certain senior members of the civil service, government ministers, and aristocrats. The principle argument the Progressives fronted regarding this change is not about military autonomy, rather the equality of persons that has become a major issue in Themiclesia following the Pan-Septentrion War. Symbolic forms of inequality were deeply ingrained into the civil service hierarchy, which in turn was the denominator for all the symbolic honours that other public servants received.
In 1915, in order to secure more autonomy for the armed forces, the aristocracy and peerage that dominated Parliament provided that the military may not exceed the hierarchical honours and privileges enjoyed by the senior members of the civil service. Thus, if the Cabinet Secretary had six heralds, then the most senior military officer could only have five, etc. The following year, it was outlawed for military officers to wear medals and decorations that outranked the most senior civil servant in any occasion. The War and Navy Offices also ordered that military officers must do "obeisance, courtesy, and homage" to the Government minsiters, peers, MPs, judges of the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court, privy councillors, cabinet secretaries, and permanent secretaries of various departments.
Additionally, the 1915 law also provided that in case of a military accomplishment, the largest credit is to be awarded to the Government and the responsible minister, the second to senior civil servants involved in the victory, and then to the military commanders in charge. The honours awarded to commanders cannot legally exceed or equal that of the "honours ordained to the Permanent Secretary of the War Office, or any of his Under-Secretaries", but this law became unenforceable when many new honours were hastily created in the PSW without reference to the civil service honours. These symbolic forms of deference constitute the meaning of "civilian supremacy" as the Act of 1975 abolishes.