Legal Services

BASE Service

In regard to BASE services, the element related to Legal Services can be distilled to the right to have a court appointed public defense lawyer.
All citizens, regardless of circumstances, are entitled to a full defense, if accused of breaking the law.

Community Responsibility

Each layer can enact their own laws and therefore has a corresponding responsibility to provide for:

• the no-cost defense of those accused of breaking its laws
• legal processing system to prosecute transgressions of their laws, including courts, judges and related administration
• police to enforce the laws

These are discussed in more depth at Community.

Policing

Policing, as most of us experience it, is a local community activity and is primarily concerned with the protection of the rights of all citizens.
The fundamental review of existing legal statutes to ensure that the law does not infringe on the freedoms of citizens in their private spaces will have two positive impact on policing activity:lifeBASE200.gif
it will free up resources for police forces to focus on criminal activity in the public space
it will create the cooperative atmosphere that policing is dependent on for the successful investigation and prosecution of crimes

It is envisioned that within the Legal Services department of every layer of government there will be staff responsible for each of these primary services:

• policing
• prosecution
• public defense
• judiciary

Democracy Infrastructure

The Legal Services portion of BASE must include the costs necessary to support the constitutional democratic responsibilities of the constituency.
These costs will include:

• Assembly facilities
• Election management
• Representative compensation
• Jurisprudence infrastructure

Defense

The devolved, multilayer structure of representative government described in the Standards of LIFE will fundamentally change the role of, and the need for, military forces. The voluntary association of each constituency as a member of the next largest constituency layer should substantially ease, if not eliminate, the tensions between adjoining communities.
However we are not so naïve as to believe that decades, or even centuries, of bloodshed and strife will evaporate overnight. It is likely that even after adopting a multilayer democratic structure that there will be many regions, states and transterritories that will seek to maintain their military forces to protect their sense of security. Furthermore, given the extent of the militarization of many societies today, it is practically certain that the de-escalation of tensions, the decommissioning of military forces and the transition to a new democratic structure are three paths on the same road that will have to be managed in unison.
While it is the right of any constituency to protect themselves from aggression, there will always be the temptation for those that possess the capacity for the use of military force, to employ those resources to settle disputes with other constituencies. In fact it is the community of societies, all having adopted a common agenda based on the same respect for each other and principles of operation similar to what has been laid out in the Standards of LIFE, that represents the securest defense against aggression.
Eventually, as people and societies settle into the devolved democratic structure of LIFE, they are likely to start recognizing that there are better uses for any resources that they are expending on their militaries.

It is a principle of the Standards of LIFE, that even in those societies that elect to maintain a military, that none of the government revenues received from income taxes shall be allocated to military expenses. This is a vital component to the holistic and integrated structure of the Standards of LIFE and it is varied or ignored at the peril of any adopting society, because it undermines the universal acceptance of those taxes as part of the contract between citizens of the same constituency and because it direct resources away from the most basic needs of the society.