Tepertopian Articles of Union (Pacifica)
| Tepertopian Articles of Union | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Tepertopier Bundesakte |
| Jurisdiction | United Protectorate of Tepertopia |
| Presented | 14 December 1887 |
| Ratified | 28 July 1889 |
| Date effective | 14 December 1889 |
| System | Federal directorial constitutional monarchy |
| Branches | 3 |
| Head of state | Protector of Tepertopia |
| Chambers | Tepertopian Assembly |
| Executive | Council of the Union |
| Judiciary | High Court of Tepertopia |
| Federalism | Yes |
| Commissioned by | Tepertopian Restoration Convention |
| Author(s) | Treaty Assembly |
| Signatories |
|
| Supersedes | Tepertopian Harmonist Charter |
The Tepertopian Articles of Union (Alman: Tepertopier Bundesakte), commonly referred to as the Articles, are a treaty between the constituent states of Tepertopia that serves as the constitution of Tepertopia. They provide the Protectorate to be governed as a federal directorial constitutional monarchy with the Protector of Tepertopia being the country's monarch.
A reunification treaty was commissioned by the Tepertopian Restoration Convention in early 1887 with the goal to re-establish a Tepertopian federation, after the Tepertopian Harmonist Protectorate dissolved into its federated states after the fall of its government. What would become the Articles were then authored by the Treaty Assembly, which finalised and presented them on 14 December 1887. The six states Grimmen, Lotze, Peninley, Pluvy, Valetria, and Vickel each proceeded to ratify the Articles over the following one and a half years, with Valetria being the final state to do so, finally ratifying them on 28 July 1889. Since the conditions of Article 168, which declared the Articles to attain force of law either on 14 December 1889 ‒ two years after the original presentation ‒ or once all states have ratified it (whichever were to happen later), were met, the Articles became effective as the constitution of the Tepertopian Third Protectorate on 14 December 1889.
The Articles are divided into twelve parts ‒ with a preamble before and the eschatocol after them ‒ which are composed of a total of 192 distinct articles. Fundamental principles for the whole of the constitution are determined in Articles 1 (which declares the Protectorate to be "founded on the principles of freedom, democracy, social solidarity, and the rule of law"), 2 (making the promotion of "the general welfare of its people" the "supreme duty of the state"), and 3 (which demands a separation of powers), with their essence protected from any alteration by Article 105 (eternity clause).
In comparison to earlier governing documents of the Tepertopian Second Protectorate, the authors severely strengthened judicial independence from executive or legislative overreach to prevent the circumstances that originally allowed the Harmonist takeover of the Second Protectorate. Another consequence is the author's attempt to divide power between as many hands as possible, often in the form of consensus-oriented supermajority requirements, which led to severe political deadlocks in the early years of the Articles until gradual rollback of such supermajority requirements finally solved the issue. As the debate over whether to continue the monarchy or to finish what the Harmonists had started and convert Tepertopia to a republic could not be settled finally, the Articles avoided both a declaration of popular sovereignty and assigning sovereignty to emanate from the Protector, instead opting to derive the federal sovereignty from those of the contracting states and simply declare the Protector to be its personification. With Pluvy and Vickel as republican states and Grimmen, Lotze, and Valetria as monarchies, the federal sovereignty remains split in legitimisation to this day.