Issue resolution
Level 8 concept (Very high) - Important concept an Izara Community should strive to implement and maintain
Overview
A community driven issue resolution process that ensures all members of society achieve equal access to a fair legal system, where decisions are based on the current beliefs of the community.
Multiple levels of sortition
Any person can raise an issue that gets assigned a jury using sortition, at the early levels the sortition could include all members of society.
If any party feels the decision of the first level was unjust they can appeal the decision to a higher level of sortition, higher levels might include more jury members or people who would likely have a better understanding of the rules and concepts the community adheres to, eg elder members.
The number of jury members and pool of community members chosen from at each level, and the number of sortition levels is decided on by the community.
The community could decide that jurors are only selected from people who have shown a level of understanding of justice and rational decision making, however care should be taken not to restrict the selection pool, as the large the population to choose from the less centralized justice becomes
Cost of appealing to a higher level
If the process becomes overwhelmed with appeals a cost could be introduced for making an unsuccessful appeal.
An alternative is if someone makes unfounded appeals other people in the community could raise an issue against them for this behavior, which in term might have punishments judged against the offender.
New evidence
If new evidence is uncovered for a previously decided case, a new issue could be raised referring to the previous judgement.
As with any issue raised if someone is abusing the issue resolution system be raising unfounded issues, an issue could be raised against them for this behavior.
Ambiguous cases
Issues where guilt is not clear, half way punishments or warnings could be applied according to the level of evidence, this allows for a jury to judge someone as possibly guilty with some punishment, rather than releasing them with no guilt or punishing them with full guilt.
If new evidence arises that punishment could be remedied.
Additional investigation
The community could assign the task of finding additional evidence to parties, similar to any other task of responsibility those parties can be assessed and changed according to the communities desire.
A jury that requires additional information could task those parties as required. If juries task an unreasonable amount of work to investigators they themselves could have an issue raised against them.
Implementation
Technology should be developed to make the issue resolution process run as effectively as possible, so lack of resources does not become a hindrance.
Education
Because members of the community are expected to partake in the conflict resolution process which to operate fairly requires an understanding of laws, rules, and rational thinking, this should be incorporated into the education of community members.
Compensation for jury work
The community can choose to compensate jury members if evidence shows doing so achieves more attention to the case and thus better outcomes.
A system that ensures normal work activities of jury members gets assigned to others during the process could be implemented.