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A few days ago an amendment to the Honours and Commendations Act written by Lyoko passed the Senate. It changed the procedure for giving out the Senior Counsel, a commendation given out to distinguished attorneys, Judges, or jurists by the SimDemocracy Bar Association. The amendment allowed for persons to be nominated for the commendation through a petition signed by at least ⅕ of the Bar Association. The public vote where the nominee had to achieve a 2/3rds majority among Bar Members was still kept required though.
Bar Member Ben decided to use this new amendment by starting a petition to award the Senior Counsel to Ivy Cactus, a long-time Justice of the Supreme Court, which was quickly signed by 20 Bar Members, more than 1/5th of the Bar Association, which in this case would be 14 people.
Ivy Cactus is a long-time Justice of the Supreme Court, having recently been re-appointed to it in the beginning of 2025 after already having served it as a Justice much earlier in 2021. He has written many distinguished judgements laying the foundation for some of the most important fields of SimDemocracy law, such as Reference re Voting by Proxy 2025 - an important piece of electoral law -, or Reference re Treaties 2021 - an older verdict still oftentimes cited when debating constitutional law on foreign policy.
Notably, the final vote which actually determined whether he would get the commendation or not had only 16 Bar Members participate. Fourteen of those voted Aye, whereas only two voted Nay, easily achieving the required 2/3rds majority.