And Cross Makes Ten

Navroz Chandaria, one of Renraku's Court representatives has died in a terroist bombing in New Delhi. Renraku has been so sorely depleted that Chandaria has been replaced by... Yves Aquillon of Cross Applied Technologies! Dr. Lucien Cross has been pushing for a spot on the court for some time, and with his continuing feud with Ares' Damien Knight, it looked like he might never get the chance to take his corp triple A. But now, due to some unknown fenagaling, Cross has made the Big Eight (along with Wuxing) become the Big Ten.

It's an ever changing corporate world. Blink and you're lost.

If memory serves... didn't Leonard Aurelius recently leave Ares to join Cross Applied? Wonder if that has any bearing on Cross getting a court spot? Bet Damien Knight is having an aneurism over the whole deal.

OK, so remind me. How many court justices are there and which megas have more than one right now. I'll starting a betting pool on how long they last. I count no less than 20 corps at least as big as Cross and Wuxing and the justice assassination route seems to be working well right now.

The court is composed of 13 justices selected from the ranks of the Big Ten. There's been some chatter since the ranks expanded of adding more justices, but no agreement yet. A bedrock clause states that the original Big Seven founders can never lose their last seat on the Court (and thus can't lose their AAA ratings).

The justices sit on the Court for 6.5 year stretches and can serve as many terms as they can get re-elected for. They can also be recalled by the corp they represent, though the corp usually just frags the skag in order to save time. Terms are staggered, so a new justice comes up for re-election every six months.

Justices are elected by a special commission that meets every 6 months (or sooner if necessary) and is composed of 2 representatives from each of the Big Ten. Unlike most elections, individual votes have different values depending on how powerful a corp is.

Theoretically Yamatetsu, Cross & Wuxing can lose their justices and be removed from the Court. So you can bet that rule is on everyone's mind when ever the justices from a non-founding corp comes up for election.

Saeder-Krupp, Mitsuhama, & Ares each have 2 justices all the other AAAs have 1 each.

As I understand it the corporate court is there to prevent the sort of wholesale business-by-assassination that we've been seeing in the past few months. I can't imagine anyone is happy about the violent deaths of justices.

I have to believe the court is very interested in who the responsible parties are and would be willing to exercise their full power to punish them in order to discourage such things from happening again.

So my question is:
Does the court have its own independent spy network? They don't really need an enforcement arm what with things like the Omega Order and enough funds to get freelancers. But do they have their own way of investigating or do they rely on the individual AAA corps to bring the evidence?

If that's the case I understand the timing. Fuchi and Renraku aren't really in a position to look into the killings to drive the court to act. Saeder-Krupp, Mitsuhama and Ares aren't as vulnerable to assassination right now (I can't imagine who would risk it) but if I understand what you’re saying their extra justices could be voted out if enough of the committee grouped together.

The Corporate court relies on the individual AAA corps to bring the evidence in against other AAAs. And I would point out that just because a corporation's Justice was killed does not mean that the corporation was a victim. Corporations have terminated there own Justices before. So there is high motivation to do what is good for your corporation while sitting in that seat of power.