On Aug 11, 2009, at 2:05 PM, Avri Doria wrote:

Hi,

I am not sure US laws cares about administrative justice. Would be interesting to know. But one can certainly demand that ICANN live up to such conditions of fairness.

Might be a good position to take in a possible Ombudsman appeal.

BTW: also need to add in the fact that the 2 SGs in the contracted parties house were ultimately allowed to have a charter that did not include Constituencies. As far as I can tell there have not been any explanations, either cogent or otherwise, of why they were allowed but NCSG wasn't.

Yes, I agree we should add this point in to the letter about the 2 other SG's adopting the SG approach we formulated, but we were singularly denied. We may also want to add in a section that goes into the merits / arguments why the civil society charter is a better model than the staff drafted charter (encouraging fragmentation v. unity, etc.).

Thanks,

Robin

Perhaps this fits into the argument about the NCSG proposed charter having never really been considered because it was superseded by the Policy Staff created charter.

Note: i was never in favor of constituency-less SG charters, but that is what NCUC bottom up process originally decided on, and as I understand only changed when it became clear that it would not be allowed. At least not for the NCSG. I apologize for my role in helping to convince NCUC to back down on that (and some other stuff) - but i never envisioned that the Board would allow it - i was wrong.

a.

On 11 Aug 2009, at 16:39, Willie Currie wrote:

With regard to section 2 on specific issues with the NCSG Charter adopted by the Board, isn't there a body of US adminstrative law we can draw on to attack the decision on the grounds of administrative injustice, as it appears that the process adopted by ICANN in its decision-making on the charters has been based on:

- the misperceptions circulated about the NCUC by the ALAC chair and others (p9)
- the timing of the late release of the SIC/Staff Charter and the process surrounding its tabling to the Board (p7)
- the failure of the Board to discuss the NCUC's proposed Charter, implying the failure of the NCUC's views to be heard by an administrative body (is there evidence of this?) (p10)
- the filtering of views in the 'Summary & Analysis' document and the short time it was provided to the Board before the July 30 Meeting (today's NCUC meeting)

In addition, the disparity in treatment between the Board's treatment of the NCSG and CSG charters raises issues of administrative fairness regarding constituencies and the issue of the ICANN Board being guilty of discrimination and prejudice (p10).

I don't know how administrative justice works in the USA but these are the kinds of issues in other jurisdictions which would be used to overturn a decision of an administrative body on technical grounds of administrative fairness, whether through formal processes of judicial review or alternative dispute mechanisms, which is often easier to do than challenging issues on the merits or content of decisions.