Thank you, Elder. Scribe Rogamark for the Double-Crown, may it please the court.
In this case, petitioner Pharaoh Emeritus Cormac Montresor-Stark seeks a binding interpretation as to the question of whether or not a full pardon reinstates personal honors that have been automatically revoked as a result of a criminal conviction.[note]
Osiran Holidays and Honors Act, section 2.6[/note]
In the absence of both clear precedent in this jurisdiction, and binding definitions of what exactly constitutes a "full pardon", we initially assume that a pardon is what most RL jurisdictions have defined as a pardon: an act of the government that removes the criminal sanctions inflicted upon an individual as a result of a conviction in a court of law. Which raises the question, is the revocation of honors a criminal sanction? While the petitioner is quite correct that it was expressly mentioned in the judgment against him[note]OFO vs. Cormac Stark,
judgment[/note], then-Elder Joshua Ravenclaw correctly cited section 2.6 of the Osiran Holidays and Honors Act as the legal basis for the
automatic revocation, which would have applied in any event, mentioned in the judgment or not. (On which legal basis he ruled that the petitioner would be allowed to petition the Deshret for reinstatement escapes the Double-Crown, seeing as there are no reinstatement provisions in the law, and this right is clearly a privilege rather than a penalty, and therefore not covered under the State Code.[note]
State Code of Osiris, section 4.4[/note])
We therefore respectfully submit to the court that the revocation is not part of the criminal sanctions against the petitioner, but rather an automatic civil consequence of his felony/high crime conviction. There is ample RL precedent for this interpretation, e.g. the loss of voting or gun rights in numerous countries, which apply even though judges do not expressly adjudicate it in their written judgment. Following this logic, the answer to both questions would be no, a pardon does not reinstate any honors. All it does is to remove the criminal sanctions of a conviction, not the conviction itself with all its ramifications.
Of course we are free to define "pardon" any way we wish. An equally tenable interpretation, also based on RL precedent, would be that a pardon, as understood in the Osiris Fraternal Order, is meant to allow the recipient to start over with a clean slate. Nothing in the law would prevent the court from ruling that a pardon does actually remove the criminal conviction itself, or at least all its consequences. The question is which interpretation is more consistent with the spirit and intention of Osiran law as a whole.
With that in mind, the Double-Crown favors the second interpretation.
Under the law[note]
Osiran Holidays and Honors Act, section 2.6, II[/note], an individual convicted of a felony or high crime is not only stripped of all the honors they might have received in the past, but also prevented from ever earning them again. While that may be justified in cases where defendants simply serve out their criminal judgment, we have an entirely different situation with recipients of a pardon. Pardons do not just fall from heaven. The Pharaoh needs to declare it, the Deshret needs to approve of it[note]
State Code of Osiris, section 2.8[/note]. That means prior to a pardon, a lot of people - both the executive and legislative branches of the government - need to be convinced the recipient deserves a second chance to fully participate in the region and community of the Osiris Fraternal Order.
And this is what a pardon, in our opinion, is about. To allow the recipient back into full participation in all aspects of the region. We submit that keeping them excluded from the system of honors is inconsistent with this objective, as well as with the general philosophy with regard to second chances in Osiris, which has served the region well in the past. Personally, I would prefer to keep revoked honors revoked permanently, but allow pardon recipients - or even regular convicted people, after a while - to earn them back. Unfortunately, even with the most generous of interpretations, neither the law in general nor the judgment in the petitioner's case permit that, it's all or nothing. We should go for "all" here. [note]And probably think about a few amendments to the Holidays and Honors Act, but that discussion is to be held in another venue[/note]
Therefore, the Double-Crown respectfully requests that the Pschent answers both questions
in the first alternative and finds that a pardon does reinstate revoked honors.
