Overview

• 3L’s ultimate goal is that, wherever one stands on planet Earth, all laws in that place reflect at least a reasonable construction of the 3L Principle, and people fairly enforce them with due process.
• The 3L Philosophy does not prescribe precisely how the Legal Principle is implemented, enforced, or adjudicated. There are multiple ways to accomplish these critical and necessary functions; no one approach will achieve perfection.
• Local communities may opt to separate the three branches of governance as a key defense against abuse of power.

The three branches of governance

• The three branches of governance (known as the ‘Westminster model’) are
  1. The legislative branch (law-makers; those who draft laws consistent with the Legal Principle for the local community),
  2. The executive branch (law enforcement) and
  3. The judicial branch (courts).
     • A jury is an excellent way to safeguard against potential judicial overreach. Particularly in criminal court trials, a jury brings community judgment into the legal process, ensuring that verdicts reflect shared community values by allowing ordinary citizens to check the power of the prosecuting entity in criminal prosecutions. Whether jurors should be entirely untrained or receive some formal education and training is a matter left for local communities to determine.
• Separating these three branches, along with checks and balances, may be prudent (or, some argue, indispensable) for maintaining a free society.
• One potential threat to this model is when judges create law, a phenomenon known as judicial activism. However, when a higher court finds that a law infringes on a person’s freedom and invalidates it, this is not making law, but rather serving as an appropriate watchdog of the legislature. An indispensable judicial role in a 3LP-compatible world is to invalidate all laws that are not in harmony with the Legal Principle.