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The Vesey Estate
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The Vesey Republic
March 3, 2024
America's 2024 elections will either result in Donald Trump being elected president of a future authoritarian proto-fascist regime, or a Democrat winning a highly contentious race followed by destabilizing white nationalist political violence.
Both scenarios could trigger a constitutional crisis of legitimacy, widespread social chaos, secession movements, civil war, and the federal government's collapse. No one can predict the outcome of the confluence of events gathering on the horizon.
One reasonable assumption, however, is that amid the fog of an existential crisis and disintegration of authority, advanced elements among the Black Commons will spontaneously take control of "contested" or "ungoverned" spaces to invoke self-rule.
Confronted with the option of living in Trump's American Apartheid dystopia or returning to Democrats' milquetoast liberalism and corporately managed democracy, a substantial cohort of Blacks will opt for armed self-defense, negotiations, and some form of autonomy. New Black Nationalists addressed both these issues in our National Divorce and Integrated Battlespace Doctrine series and will not recount them here.
Rather, the Vesey Republic of Letters (RoL) is a series of essays and commentaries that respond to the thorny predicament of how the Black Commons choosing self-determination, autonomy, and independence can govern with a new parliamentary system model.
This isn't a speculative question for armchair philosophers in the distant future: it's an urgent question for the now of things. Since the failed January 6, 2021, Barristers Coup, Trump and the MAGA sedition have been planning how to steal the 2024 election by any means necessary. They are not alone. Government crisis management teams from Moscow to Beijing to London have been scaling up table-top exercises and computer gaming scenarios for a new world order in which America becomes the central outpost of a global authoritarian race-based oligarchy.
If a contested post-2024 election leads to violence, a political stalemate, secession, and negotiations to partition the country into independent states (the National Divorce scenario) how would the Black Commons govern its sovereign polities?
Could the Black Commons and its allies deploy a functional governance structure to direct the affairs of state, defend and establish control over majority Black-led city-states like Detroit, a carved-out autonomous region in California, or an independent nation-state combining Mississippi and Louisiana?
New Black Nationalists respond with confidence in the affirmative. On June 8, 2024, NBN will release the Vesey Republic Estate Parliament system model in conjunction with the 158th observance of Juneteenth. This first Vesey Republic of Letters document introduces the major elements of Estate Parliament's system that can be deployed to effectively govern a panoply of majority-Black-led polities that may simultaneously emerge in different parts of the country during an existential crisis.
RoL-1 outlines the architecture of Vesey's Estate Parliament's government system and its guiding principles. Comparisons with the United States presidential-based constitutional republic model are provided to provide further clarity regarding the substantive differences between the two systems.
The Vesey Republic Estate Parliament Model
Vesey's Estate Parliament system is a unicameral and unilateral administered by a parliamentary republic system of government.
Vesey's unilateral government structure centralizes decision-making power in one body: the Estate Parliament. In America's constitutional system, legislative decision-making power resides with two branches of government: the Executive and Legislative Branches.
As a unicameral system, the Estate Parliament is comprised of one legislative body. There is no upper and lower legislative body like the American system with a House of Representatives and a Senate legislative chamber.
In Vesey's Estate Parliament system, the executive and legislative powers are fused as opposed to the American system of separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches.
Vesey's First Prime Minister is an elected member of Parliament and head of the government's Executive Branch, its cabinet ministers, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The First Prime Minister is elected by members of parliament not by the direct vote of citizens, and also serves as the ceremonial Head of State.
The First Prime Minster also leads the Estate Parliament as the majority party leader or leader of a majority coalition of parties in the legislature. In the Vesey Estate Parliament system, the First Prime Minister and his majority party, or majority coalition of parties, can propose and adopt legislation with a simple majority of votes.
Unlike America's system of three separate and "so-called" co-equal branches of government and bicameral legislative bodies, Vesey's Estate Parliament can move legislation with dispatch, efficiency, and without the possibility of rejection as long as the First Prime Minister's government has the requisite number of votes to pass its measures.
In the American system, one house may pass a bill while the other rejects it. Legislation is often killed for purely partisan reasons when one legislative house is controlled by Democrats and the other by Republicans. Certain bills that reach the 100-member Senate chamber cannot pass without the required sixty votes instead of a simple majority vote. Legislation is also held hostage by arcane rules and maneuvers like the Senate filibuster. Appointments to critical civil and military government posts can be delayed indefinitely with an objection by one Senate member.
Moreover, bills that pass both legislative chambers can be vetoed by the president and subsequently fail to secure a two-thirds majority vote to override the presidential veto. Finally, the third branch of government, the Supreme Court, can overturn significant legislation, ruling it unconstitutional through its power of Judicial Review.
Vesey's Estate Parliamentary system dispenses with all the impediments of America's governing system that obstruct the work of responsive government.
The Principle of Parliamentary Sovereignty
The major features of Vesey's Estate Parliament system outlined above operate under the governing theory of Parliamentary Sovereignty which can be described as follows.
Parliamentary sovereignty is a constitutional principle that designates parliament as the supreme legal authority in the land.
There are three main principles of parliamentary sovereignty in a parliamentary system.
1. Parliament can create or dispose of any laws. Every statute that Parliament enacts is legally valid, and therefore all citizens and officials, including the courts, are legally obligated to obey it.
2. Acts of Parliament cannot be overridden by any other branch of government, but only by a national referendum of the citizens concerning the curtailment or elimination of citizens' rights enumerated in the Vesey Republic's Charter of Rights or other constitutionally protected provisions in Vesey's uncodified constitution.
3. Parliament cannot be bound by the legislative act of its predecessors or previous legal precedents and likewise, its legislative acts cannot bind its successor parliaments.
The Vesey Republic's Uncodified Constitution
Parliamentary Sovereignty is a constitutional principle that establishes parliament as the supreme legal authority of the nation or political entity. But what type of constitution will the Vesey Republic adopt that establishes the rules for how its government operates in the following areas?
The distribution of powers of government institutions.
The nature of the relationships between the government institutions.
The limits of power placed on the government.
The rights of the citizens, and the Vesey's Republic's Women-Led Autonomous Region.
The ability to amend or change a government ruling.
The proposed Vesey Republic Estate Parliament system will adopt what is called an uncodified constitution.
An uncodified constitution is a constitution in which the body of laws and principles enumerating the functions, structures, and duties of a nation's government are not written down and contained in one single document like the Constitution of the United States.
In an uncodified constitution, the sources of its operations and principles guiding the national government's body of laws may consist of the following.
-Multiple documents like Vesey's Charter of Rights and Declaration of Independence.
-Customary practices and principles of historic Black, African, and other communities.
-Previous recognized common law practices.
-Previous U.S. statutory laws, judgments, treaties, and historical conventions.
Written codified constitutions like the U.S. Constitution that are spelled out in one single source document, tend to be rigid in their interpretation, require a raft of procedures to amend or change, and are deeply entrenched across a series of issues.
The Vesey Republic's uncodified constitution is more flexible because there is no formal separation of powers to navigate. Parliament can pass laws to correct legislation that becomes outdated, or experience proves is ineffective. The process to make changes and amendments does not require cumbersome hurdles to surmount like the requirement that two-thirds of all states must ratify an amendment to the constitution.
Parliamentary Sovereignty and the Role of the Judiciary
In the Vesey Republic Estate Parliament system, the most contentious issue that arose in recommending the parliamentary sovereignty model was the role of the judiciary. In the Estates Parliament system, New Black Nationalists considered the option to empower the High Court of Justice--the highest court in the Republic--with the right to Judicial Review.
As conceived the Estate Parliament system, the High Court of Justice (HCJ) serves as the ultimate court of appeal for all civil cases and also hears criminal cases. NBN opted against Vesey's HCJ having Judicial Review authority.
The purpose of Judicial Review is to determine whether the executive or legislative branches' actions are consistent with the country's constitution. If not, the actions taken by the two branches could be deemed unconstitutional, and null and void.
Although NBN choose not to invest the HCJ with Judicial Review, we recommended the HJC had the right to issue non-binding opinions explaining its reasoning as to why any particular executive or legislative measure is unconstitutional.
Further, the advisory Council of Sages can respond to the HJC's opinion, issue a report on the potential effects of the measure in question and propose possible remedies. The Estates Parliament, taking into account these responses and public opinion among its constituents could revisit the matter legislatively but not be legally compelled to reverse or amend the legislation in question. In that instance, they could be held accountable at the next election, a snap election triggered by a parliamentary vote of "No Confidence" or a national referendum.
The same protocols outlined above would also generally apply to any acts of Vesey's executive and legislative branches that may be deemed unconstitutional concerning any infringement, curtailment, or elimination of rights enumerated in the Vesey Republic's Charter of Rights. Any attempt to diminish Vesey Republic's citizens' rights will be looked upon with grave concern. These rights are regarded as sacred and unassailable by the Vesey's Estate Parliament's executive and legislative branches.
Conclusion
Conceived in the throes of American Empire's disintegrating social order and likely confronted with myriad unforeseen dangers and adversarial military threats, Vesey's Estate Parliament system is designed to be a responsive government model capable of acting in a timely, decisive, and unified manner that enjoys governmental consensus and the support of its people.
As the government structure of a new Black nation, the Vesey Republic's design emphasizes the importance of the government functioning in a close-knit and unified manner as it struggles to find its sea legs and vital center. To build trust and inspire the confidence of Vesey's citizens in a governing system that is entirely new to them, we want to simplify government and make it as transparent as possible.
At a time when the republic is a newborn fighting for its life, creating a government of three separate branches, the separation of powers, elaborate checks and balances, extended timelines to amend the constitution, the slow walk of cases to the Supreme Court and receiving the outcome of the court's decisions is a recipe for inaction, political stasis, and a spawning ground to cultivate excessive factionalism.
The Vesey Republic's Estates Parliament system is not a government of flowery words and grand idealist concepts of the perfect political system. America's founders were mostly slaveholding aristocrats who created a republic in the grandiloquent and celestial philosophical world of "reason" in the Enlightenment Era.
The great American experiment was not based on the practical realities of society. They intended for citizens to elect the nation's wisest and most enlightened minds to reach decisions for the common good through rational arguments and debate. Most of all they were steeped in the illusion that they could enslave millions of African people and their descendants and somehow reconcile its crime against humanity with references to credos like "all men are created equal."
Look at what we have now. Quacks, conspiracy theorists, seditionists, religious cultists, and book burners. There are no co-equal branches of government, there is no majority rule. In a government where the executive and legislative branches are dysfunctional and corrupted by large corporations and foreign powers, six unelected Lateran Council Supreme Court members issue one decision after another that is at odds with the majority of U.S. citizens. This the great republic of reason the founders envisioned.
The Vesey Republic's Estate Parliament system affects a radical departure from the United States presidential-based constitutional democracy system and a substantial modification of the United Kingdom's Westminster system of a parliamentary republic.
In the weeks leading up to the June 8, 2024 release of the completed Vesey Republic Estate Parliament government model, the Charter of Rights, and Declaration of Independence, New Black Nationalists will regularly post Republic of Letters documents exploring the design, principles, and rationale animating the Estate Parliament model. We welcome your comments and recommendations @veseyrepublic.
Federalist 10
Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control violence of faction...The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, have been the mortal diseases under which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations.
Political parties are private associations. They seek to overpower the independent thought of voters through partisanship.
Partisan parties engage in conspiracies to overpower the government's designs to prevent any one person or group from ever gaining enough power to act alone.
The Separation of Powers Between the Federal Government and the States
They divided authority between the federal government and the states,
The Separation of Powers Between the Branches of Government
The divided authority between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.
Checks and Balances
They divided the legislature between two houses. - requiring mutual agreement.
The tyranny of the majority.
One of the most important objections to popular vote processes is that they may lend themselves to tyranny of the majority.
Against the Superior Force of the Overbearing Majority
Madison maintained direct participation of citizens in government decision-making, “Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority”.
“Of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.”
Against the Direct Democracy
The concern that referendums lead to less considered and enlightened decisions than parliamentary decision-making and, even more precariously, may be used to oppress minorities is the common thread.
Restraining the Majority from Opposing the Minority
Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests: you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or is such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.
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No.1
Welcome to the Vesey Republic of Letters
A compendium of essays on nation-building and state-building
The Vesey Estate Parliament System & the Principle of Parliamentary Sovereignty: RoL-No.1
