We Can't Make Laws!

[Core Room]

"The population's been growing, so we need a legal system, but if I recall, this dungeon couldn't enact laws. Rāja-san, what's the procedure for enacting a law?"

"To explain it simply: first, the Cabinet or a Diet member submits a bill; next, the Diet passes it, it is promulgated, and it comes into force."

"And of those steps, the ones involving acts of state, which this dungeon can't perform, are?"

"First, we cannot appoint a Cabinet."

"So we can't form a Cabinet."

"Next, we cannot issue the official notice for Diet-member elections, nor convoke the Diet."

"Without an assembly you can't deliberate on a bill, huh. Though elections themselves seem impossible as things stand anyway."

"Furthermore, we cannot promulgate laws."

"So that's out too, then."

"Beyond that, there are other things this Library-City Dungeon cannot do, such as appointing the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court or ambassadors and the like."

"… So, what do we do. That's the question, isn't it. As the population keeps growing from here on, we'll need proper laws too. As it stands, we say 'death for murder, corporal punishment for assault, fines for theft,' but that isn't formal law either."

"For now it's Liu Bang's Three-Article Law. Indeed, that won't suffice."

"We could send a bill to the otherworld by some means… but since we can't form a Cabinet or an assembly, in the first place we can't even draft a bill, can we."

"This is a world resembling Edo-period Japan, but it isn't Japan, so there's no need to make laws in accordance with constitutional procedure."

"True enough, I suppose. We could stage a coup and do without formal laws altogether…"

"As a practical matter, the Library-City Dungeon is already effectively independent, so even without declaring a coup and setting up a military government, if we simply went on enacting pseudo-laws as we please, the residents wouldn't take issue with the act itself. They'd stage an uprising, mind you, if they disliked the content of the laws."

"The residents' mentality is on a par with the Edo period, after all. In the end, whether it's a Daikan or a dungeon, it amounts to 'the authorities,' huh."

"They aren't law in the modern sense, but something like the codes the shogunate or a domain laid down as it pleased. That'll pass muster."

"In that case, Rāja-san, I'd like you to draw up a legal system, 'or something like one,' that applies to this dungeon's settlers. There's no assembly now, but if Marie-san and the others check it over, I don't think there'll be any problem as far as their respective specialties go. And, as things stand it isn't strictly law, but in the future will an assembly be necessary?"

"As for an assembly, on the southwest side of Tier-Group 4's first floor there's a hall just right for a chamber. Remove half the chairs and put in desks, and you could seat around fifty legislators, with the rear holding over a hundred seats for spectators."

"Fifty legislators means…"

"There's no provision setting the number of legislators, but by an ancient law it was forty-six for a population of 300,000, fifty-two for 400,000, fifty-six for 500,000, so something on that order."

"500,000. How many stories would that take to build?"

"At fifty households per floor, two thousand stories."

"That would clear Mt. Fuji with ease. Come to think of it, from the rooftop you can't see anything that looks like Mt. Fuji. Is there none?"

"Either there's none, or it's in a different position. Marie's better versed in that sort of thing than I am."